BUGFIST

Fully managed cloud playtesting for indie game studios.

Türkiye's home-grown playtesting platform, built in İstanbul.

Türkiye Tech Visa Start-up Track Application · 2026

Hessam Hezaveh · Shayan Ebrahimzadeh

bugfist.com

01/16

INTRODUCTION

Hessam Hezaveh

Solution architecture / Full-stack

Around six years across solution architecture, full-stack development, and engineering leadership. He has owned technical direction end to end, recently architecting a single integrated platform (public website, internal LMS, and operations systems) for a global education organization, and earlier growing a software team from a solo start into a full cross-functional unit spanning web, mobile, and DevOps. He designs systems as unified wholes, bridging UX, product, and engineering across the stack.

Shayan Ebrahimzadeh

Software Engineer

Five years across game development and AWS cloud infrastructure. On an AWS for Games partner team he deployed Amazon GameLift fleets and GameLift Streams and built AWS Deadline render farms, and presented GameLift Streams at GDC 2025. Also builds Unreal Engine gameplay systems and Gen AI applications on AWS.

Eleven years of combined engineering across the three domains BugFist brings together.

02/16

- Problem Statement

AAA studios have playtest infrastructure.
Indie studios hand-stitch a substitute.

And they pay for it on every release: a coordination tax, exposed builds, and late feedback.

Indie studios stitch playtesting together from Google Drive, chat threads, self-hosted servers and spreadsheets. No single tool, and a coordination tax on their own engineering time.

Pre-release builds get sent out and run on testers' own machines, so the studio's unreleased IP is exposed on every release.

Bug reports come back scattered across chats and documents, late and hard to act on. Nothing is categorized, severity-tagged or reproducible.

03/16

- Solution

One managed workflow
replaces the hand-stitched chain.

Deploy a build to the cloud, stream it to the tester's browser, get structured reports back, review in one dashboard. One tool, no installs on either side.

The hand-stitched chain becomes a single tool: deploy, test, report and review in one place. No AWS account, no server setup, fully managed on the cloud.

The build runs in the cloud and streams to the tester's browser. It never lands on their device, so the studio's pre-release IP stays protected.

Every report comes back categorized, severity-tagged, reproducible and timestamped, all in one dashboard. No more scattered, late feedback.

04/16

- MVP

https://bugfist.com/demo/

05/16

- Market Opportunity

Not solvable in 2020 to 2023. Solvable in 2025 to 2026.

More makers, cheaper infrastructure, and niche communities, now within reach of a two-person team

More indie builds shipping every year means more playtesting demand.

New Steam releases / yr, ~99% indie · SteamDB

Custom WebRTC and six-figure GPU capex gave way to pay-as-you-go.

Cost to stream a build to testers · GameLift, Mar 2025

Indies cluster in genre communities, game jams and itch.io scenes.

Games built in one weekend · Global Game Jam (35K+ jammers)

06/16

- Market Opportunity

A reachable market of ~4,100 small studios.

Small and indie teams of 1 to 20 people in Türkiye and the EU. Our bottom-up Year-3 target is a sober ~200, a single-digit slice.

The reachable market

~4,100

small & indie studios (1 to 20 people)

Türkiye 675

European Union 3,450

Year-3 target

~200

200

0

180

480

Bottom-up target, within a 180 to 480 band: a single-digit percent of the segment.

Value per studio

~$2,500

Average blended annual value per paying studio. A market-sizing input, not a revenue forecast.

Counts: 1-to-20-person small/indie majority of 844 active Türkiye studios (Türkiye Game Market Report 2025) plus ~3,450 of ~4,600 EU studios (ISFE Key Facts; most are SMEs per EGDF). Wider context: global indie game market ~$9.9B; game-QA services $1.12B to ~$5B, enterprise-dominated and the indie tier structurally unserved (Keywords Studios $879M FY2024).

07/16

- Market Opportunity

No rival combines all four in one workflow.

Cloud streaming, structured reports, a reputation-weighted tester pool, and indie pricing. Each competitor solves one or two; to our knowledge, none is Türkiye-origin.

Antidote (Barcelona) proves the cloud-streamed model works at scale. BugFist serves the tier it leaves out: indie studios, at indie price, with structured reports and a tester pool no rival offers.

Where rivals lead: Enterprise QA tests on real console and mobile hardware; Antidote's UX-research is deeper today (BugFist is browser-streamed and narrower at MVP stage). * Antidote's cloud streaming is gated to its $475/mo Master tier.

08/16

- Business Model

One platform, two business lines.

Pre-revenue today · marketplace activates at Beta

10%

Developer

SOLO / INDIE

Tester

Enterprise

B to B

• ISOLATED PRIVATE SETUP
• Custom tools and features

INFRASTRUCTURE

Subscription

Subscription

09/16

- Traction & Achievements

A live MVP, with a real Bahçeşehir pilot.

Working today at bugfist.com, not slideware.

MVP Built & Live

Developer and tester flows, reporting end to end, at bugfist.com.

Presented

At Bahçeşehir University.

Bahçeşehir testers

Game Design students who completed test rounds on the live MVP.

On the waitlist

More students lined up for the next rounds.

10/16

- Go-to-Market Strategy

Five Türkiye-first channels, no paid acquisition.

Pre-revenue today · positioning starts six months before incorporation

Five channels build the Year-3 paying base modal paying-studio count

Technical content and a founder-led indie community that compounds over time

Industry events and studio association presence across Türkiye.

Platform listings and launch-moment outreach through ecosystem partners.

Direct founder outreach to mid-tier Türkiye studios

Community contests and program co-marketing that draw new studios.

Year 1

Pilot, then Beta

Free pilot with the BAU cohort. Beta activates the marketplace and the referral program. First paying Türkiye indie studios onboard.

Years 2 to 3

Public Launch and scale

Self-service Pro signup with payment integration. Content compounds. EU channel partnerships. Enterprise SLA and dedicated B2B open at scale.

Year-3 paying target, single-digit percent of the segment ~200 within a 180 to 480 band

11/16

- Team & Key Stakeholders

Two non-Turkish technical co-founders, 50 / 50.

Ready to incorporate under the program · no partnerships claimed

Hessam Hezaveh

Seyyed Hessam Ghaemmaghami Hezaveh

TECHNICAL LEAD

Solution architecture / Full-stack

Not a citizen of Türkiye

BAU Master of Game Design (in progress); prior master's degree

Shayan Ebrahimzadeh

Shayan Ebrahimzadeh

PRODUCT LEAD

Game development and software engineer

Not a citizen of Türkiye

BAU Master of Game Design (in progress); BSc

Advisors aware of and supportive of the Tech Visa application

A 50/50 foreign founding team with the engineering to build it and a Türkiye academic network behind it. No partnerships claimed.

12/16

- Financial Projections & Funding

Pre-revenue and self-funded, no capital sought.

Operation and reinvestment in Türkiye · not a VC exit

Revenue posture

illustrative shape, not a forecast · revenue total set at incorporation

Real to date

Set at incorporation

$0

YEAR 1

Free pilot · no revenue

First revenue

~$2,500 / studio · yr

BETA

First paying Türkiye studios

?

$ set at incorporation

YEAR 3+

Target ~200 studios · 180 to 480

$

Self-funded

Domain, hosting, modest AWS, founder time.

No external capital, grants, or equity sought now.

Founders absorb Year 1

Zero Year-1 compensation. Personal living from personal runway, kept distinct from company burn.

Operate, don't exit

Reinvest in Türkiye over the long term. Not an M&A exit, no exit multiples

Reachable market is ~4,100 studios (Slide 7); ~200 is the bottom-up Year-3 count target, not a committed $ revenue figure. Post-approval program benefits (TDZ placement, R&D tax, consultancy) are received, not investment we commit.

13/16

- Alignment with the Program

Why we are a strong fit for the Start-up track.

Seven reasons, matched to what the program values

Foreign and eligible, rooted in Türkiye

Both meet all four eligibility criteria, and both study at Bahçeşehir University in İstanbul, immersed in the local market and culture.

Solves a real, worldwide problem

Indie studios everywhere lack AAA-grade playtesting infrastructure. We make it accessible to them.

Innovative and technology-based

Cloud-streamed playtesting on AWS GameLift Streams; KVKK-native, with more innovation on the roadmap.

Technical founders, already invested

Two technical founders built and self-funded a live MVP themselves. Our own capital and time at risk, not an idea on paper.

Türkiye first, native to local teams

KVKK-native data, İyzico payment rail, built for local studios; Türkiye onboards ahead of other markets.

Scalable across the EU

A cloud platform that scales from Türkiye across the EU, built to grow beyond borders.

İstanbul technopark, advancing Türkiye's place

Ready to incorporate in an İstanbul TDZ under the program; a category with no Türkiye player yet, to our knowledge.

Foreign and technical, rooted in Türkiye, already invested, and ready to build this category here, under the program.

14/16

- Alignment with the Program

Türkiye becomes the producer of this category,
not the importer.

Five concrete economic contributions to Türkiye

01

Employment

~6 roles, hundreds of testers

Two founder permits plus a milestone-gated team by Year 3; an open tester community earns supplementary income through the marketplace, scaling with usage.

02

Technological capacity

A Türkiye-first build

First AWS GameLift Streams and KVKK-native playtest platform here, to our knowledge; a BAU and BUG Lab cohort multiplier.

03

Export

Foreign currency, day one

Service export (hizmet ihracatı) under Decree 32; earnings into Türkiye grow as the customer base diversifies.

04

Social

BAU talent pipeline

An education-to-industry path, a portable professional reputation for testers, and low-hardware browser access.

05

Business environment

Spend stays in Türkiye

Opens the 1-to-20-person indie tier and anchors the İstanbul technopark cluster.

Vision, not roadmap

5yr

vision

Run from İstanbul for Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, with Enterprise SLA and dedicated B2B, and a Türkiye tester community that grows faster than the studio side into the thousands. Türkiye exports at the platform layer, after TaleWorlds, Peak Games, and Dream Games did at the title layer.

15/16

BUGFIST

The cloud playtest infrastructure only AAA studios had, brought to indie game studios.

Deploy

Test

Report

Review

One managed workflow, built and run from İstanbul, Türkiye.

5 years out

BugFist is the cloud playtesting platform for indie game studios across Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, run from İstanbul.

16/16