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Games Atlas

Alpha

Games Industry Intelligence

Scout external partners by fit —
long before the brief goes out.

Map external development capability instead of waiting for a referral: filter studios by discipline, genre, platform and the scale of what they actually shipped — and arrive at a defensible long list without briefing anyone or naming the project.

THREE CORE QUESTIONS

Everything you want to know
before anyone knows you're looking.

Who has actually shipped something like this before?

Not who says they can. Start from titles comparable to yours and read who was credited on them — the discipline, the platform, the year, the role.

What if you don't yet know what you're looking for?

Early sourcing rarely starts with a clean spec. Sweep wide across shipped work, and the patterns you find — who does this kind of thing, how it's usually split — become the criteria you brief the team with.

Unannounced project, unnamed genre.

Everything about it is NDA'd — except your ability to find out who could build it.

OUTSOURCING PARTNERS DISCOVERY & VETTING

Build the long list — and check it —
before the project is announced.

STEP / 01

Filter by the work, not by the marketing copy

Search the collaboration record by discipline and by the character of the title it was delivered on — so a candidate appears because of what it shipped, not because of how it describes itself.

Discipline — art, co-dev, porting, QA, localization, audio, engineering.
Title character — genre, platform, scale and year of the work.
Role on the title — what the studio was actually credited for.
Output — a long list assembled in one sitting.
STEP / 02

Start from titles like yours and read who made them

The fastest route to a candidate is a comparable game. Open the titles closest to yours in genre, platform and scale, and the studios credited around them become the first version of your long list — including names nobody on the team has met.

Comparable titles — the reference set your project is closest to.
Credited partners — who was involved and in what capacity.
Beyond the usual suspects — studios outside your referral circle.
Repeat collaborators — teams that worked together more than once.
STEP / 03

Read the whole credited history, not the three chosen cases

Check the claim against the record: which titles the studio is credited on, in which role, across which years and platforms, and how often the same client came back. Repeat work over several years reads very differently from one lucky title.

Full title list — not the curated selection.
Roles and platforms — what they did, where they did it.
Relationship depth — one-off work vs. years of repeat delivery.
Attribution — who did the work, not whose name is on the box.
STEP / 04

Browsable profiles for the studios worth a closer look

Alongside search, a curated set of vendor profiles by discipline is being built — a starting point when the search begins with "who are the serious studios in this field at all?" rather than with a specific title.

By discipline — grouped the way sourcing teams think.
Credit-based profiles — built from shipped work.
In progress — rolling out with the vendor directory.
THREE MODULES

One platform.
Three ways sourcing teams use it.

MODULE / 01
Alliance Networks

Scouting and pre-qualification from credits

Filter studios by discipline and by the titles they shipped, then read the credited history, repeat relationships and corporate structure behind each candidate.

16.8K
companies
44.4K
partnerships
Explore Alliance Networks
MODULE / 02
Insights Feed

The public side of the market, where it exists

Deals, funding, acquisitions, studio changes and announced partnerships — filtered to the companies you follow and delivered to Slack, Teams or Telegram. Coverage follows what the industry publishes: larger players and owners leave a trail, quiet boutique studios rarely do.

28
this week
130+
sources
Explore Insights Feed
MODULE / 03
Gaming Realms

The competitive field a candidate has worked in

Map the genre and platform territory around the titles a candidate shipped — useful when "shipped something similar" needs a definition.

Coming Soon
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GET STARTED

Know the studio before it
knows you were looking.

Free to get started. No sales call required. Build the long list of outsourcing and co-development studios from shipped work, check the credited history of every candidate, and keep the project unnamed until you decide who to contact.

FREQUENTLY ASKED

Everything about sourcing and vetting external development partners.

How do XDEV teams use Games Atlas for game development outsourcing?

For the two steps that happen before anyone is contacted: discovery and vetting. Filter studios by the kind of work and the kind of title they have actually shipped to build a long list, then read the full credited history of each candidate — titles, roles, platforms, years, and who they delivered for — so the short list is defensible before a single brief leaves the building.

Can we scout partners without revealing what we are building?

Yes — that is the point. No brief, no RFP, no NDA and no "tell us about yourselves" emails are needed to find out who exists and who has done the work. The project stays in stealth while the long list is assembled.

How is this different from a list of game outsourcing companies?

A directory shows who chose to be listed and what they wrote about themselves. Here the starting point is recorded credits on shipped games: which studio worked on which title, in what role, on which platform and in which year — including the work that never makes it into a capability deck.

Does it cover art, QA, porting, localization and co-development?

Yes. The same collaboration data covers game art outsourcing, co-development studios, porting teams, game testing companies, game localization services, audio and engineering support — filtered by platform, genre and the scale of the titles involved.

How do we verify a studio’s claims before the first call?

Compare the pitch against the credited record: which titles the studio is actually credited on, in what role, over which years, and how often it worked with the same client more than once. Every fact keeps its source, so the reasoning survives review by production, procurement or finance.

How do we compare game outsourcing studios against each other?

On the same evidence for every candidate: shipped titles, credited role, platforms, years and repeat clients. Corporate structure is mapped separately from the studio that does the work, so a group, its labels and its individual teams are never merged into one track record — useful when the name on the deck and the team on the project are not the same entity.

Does it track delivery performance, capacity or pricing?

No, and it will not pretend to. Delivery quality, velocity, rates and capacity exist only inside the relationship between the two parties and never become public. What eventually becomes visible is the outcome — a partnership appearing in the credits of a shipped title, without any claim about how well it went.

How does this fit into our vendor vetting and procurement process?

It supplies the evidence layer. Your internal vendor database records the partners you already know; this widens the field to game art outsourcing companies, co-development and QA studios nobody on the team has met yet, and gives every candidate a sourced trail that procurement and production can re-check. Free sign-up, no sales call.
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