Games Inside ChatGPT - The Newest Channel for Marketing and Discovery

The gaming distribution landscape is evolving rapidly. While Steam, Epic, and console platforms remain dominant, a new frontier has emerged that savvy publishers can't afford to ignore: ChatGPT apps.

With over 800 million weekly active users, ChatGPT offers an unprecedented opportunity to reach players where they already spend time—in conversational AI interfaces. And the best part? The deployment process is straightforward.

The Distribution Challenge for Indie Developers

Every indie game developer knows the harsh reality of modern game distribution. You've poured months or years into crafting your game, perfecting every mechanic, polishing every detail. Then comes the hardest part: getting anyone to actually play it.

Steam released over 19,000 games last year, meaning your carefully crafted title is competing for attention in an ocean of content. But the real challenge isn't just competition—it's that visibility on Steam is entirely dependent on the algorithm. To get any traction, developers must become content creators, churning out YouTube videos, TikToks, Reddit posts, and managing Discord communities. You're not just building a game anymore; you're running a full-time marketing operation across multiple platforms, hoping to generate enough external traffic to signal to Steam's algorithm that your game deserves visibility.

Even getting a few hundred wishlists feels like an impossible mountain to climb when you're competing against developers with established audiences and AAA publishers with dedicated marketing teams. For most indie developers, distribution has become the final boss they can't beat—not because their games aren't good, but because they don't have the resources to play the content creation game at the scale required to break through.

How ChatGPT Apps Change the Game

This is where ChatGPT apps present a fundamentally different opportunity. Instead of fighting for visibility in oversaturated marketplaces, you're deploying to a platform with 800 million weekly active users who are already engaged, curious, and actively exploring what's possible. There's no expensive ad spend required to get your first players. No store page optimization, no conversion funnel, no reviews threshold to overcome before the algorithm shows you to anyone.

Users discover games through natural conversation—someone asks ChatGPT to "entertain me" or "play a mystery game," and your app can be right there, ready to deliver. The platform itself acts as your discovery engine, recommending your game to users who are primed to engage. You're not competing against 19,000 annual releases; you're building for an audience that's actively looking for novel experiences in conversational AI.

What's more, the friction to play is virtually zero. No download required, no install screens, no permission requests, no waiting. A user can go from curious to playing your game in seconds. This frictionless experience means higher conversion rates and more actual players engaging with your creation. ChatGPT apps offer distribution that simply wasn't possible before.

And perhaps most importantly for indie developers, you're getting in early. The competitive landscape is still forming. Being one of the first quality games on the platform means building reputation, audience, and visibility before the space becomes crowded. Publishers who establish presence now have the opportunity to become the recognized names when millions more discover gaming through AI interfaces.

Bringing Your Game to ChatGPT

Think of ChatGPT as an AI-native itch.io—a game distribution platform where players discover and launch games through conversation instead of browsing a traditional store. The games themselves are full Unity or Godot builds that run in the browser, just like web games on any other platform.

The beauty of this approach is that it works with games built in popular indie engines like Unity and Godot. You don't need to rebuild your game from scratch or learn entirely new tools. If you've already built a game in these engines, you can deploy it to ChatGPT and start reaching players immediately.

How It Works

The technical flow is surprisingly straightforward. When a user requests your game through ChatGPT, the AI makes an API request to your web application. Your server fetches the game configuration—metadata like title, description, canvas settings, and controls—then returns a server-generated HTML page that includes the game loader script and canvas element.

ChatGPT receives this HTML and displays it to the user, typically in an iframe, and the game runs entirely in the user's browser. The elegant part of this architecture is that ChatGPT never sees your compiled game files or source code—it just fetches and displays the HTML wrapper you send back. You maintain full control over your game files and logic while leveraging ChatGPT's massive user base for distribution.

This means you can deploy full Unity or Godot games with rich graphics, physics, and complex gameplay—not just text-based experiences. Players get a complete gaming experience delivered through conversational discovery, and you get access to 800 million potential players without rebuilding your game in a different format.

The Future of AI Game Distribution

ChatGPT apps represent just the beginning of AI-powered game distribution. As these platforms mature, we're likely to see direct revenue sharing programs from OpenAI, similar to how app stores distribute proceeds to developers. Enhanced capabilities are already emerging—better memory systems, improved reasoning, and eventually visual elements that will expand what's possible in conversational games.

The platform landscape will grow too. Claude, Gemini, and other AI platforms are watching ChatGPT's success with apps and will likely launch their own creator programs. Cross-platform AI game development could become as important as cross-platform mobile development is today. Eventually, traditional publishers will enter the space, but those who establish presence now—building reputation, refining formats, and understanding what works—will have significant competitive advantages.

The developers who treated ChatGPT apps as a curiosity will watch from the sidelines. Those who recognized it as the emergence of an entirely new distribution channel will be the ones defining how games work in this medium.

Join the Waitlist

We're building tools specifically designed to help indie developers deploy their games to ChatGPT and manage multi-platform distribution. If you're interested in being among the first to access our ChatGPT deployment platform, join our waitlist.

Join the Leyware AI Waitlist to get early access to our ChatGPT game deployment tools, analytics, and publishing platform designed for indie developers navigating the new world of AI-native game distribution.