Jahmir Hamilton made a video game with his friends for fun, and millions of people around the world played it.
Hamilton, a 21-year-old student at North Carolina Central University, used the money from that game to launch IX Studio, a game development startup that acquires other studios and projects while helping brands grow their digital marketing.
“I made IX Studio after we had released our first game called “Soul War” back in January of 2023,” Hamilton said. “And from there, I got really interested in the business element of things, and just continued to learn and grow what IX Studio was at the time.”
The Durham-based startup now boasts a wide portfolio of games. From the start, Hamilton said the team had a knack for finding promising games in development.
“We would typically target games that were close to release, or games that were close to release that couldn’t release due to lack of funding,” Hamilton said. “But eventually we ended up getting into games that were actively launched, but needed updates and everything like that.”
After acquiring a studio, the startup invites the studio’s developers to join the IX Studio team, which now consists of 180 developers and about as many quality assurance testers.
But developing video games isn’t the studio’s only practice, Hamilton said. IX Studio has also found multiple opportunities within Roblox—a wildly popular online platform on which users can program and release their own games.
The Roblox angles
The first such opportunity is offering brand integration to companies seeking recognition with younger audiences.
“We offer brands the opportunity to get their own brand experiences and brand-centered video games put out on the Roblox platform,” Hamilton said. “So that’s something that we are actively solving, and the games have that active community of global users.”
One of IX Studio’s significant integration projects on the platform was for Coldplay. The world-famous band was looking to promote its most recent album across different video games, so IX Studio developed a virtual “pay-to-play” boombox whereby players could listen to Coldplay’s music.
The integration got the band millions of streams.
“We jumped on board, and we got it done within four days,” Hamilton said. “So it was really good for us to showcase what we could do, especially with a large brand like Warner Music Group.”
Despite this sort of branding opportunity, though, Hamilton said there’s still a large problem with the Roblox market when it comes to acquisition: the lack of a central platform for buying and selling games.
“One of my buddies, last month, got scammed out of $850,000 on a game that he was selling to somebody,” Hamilton said. “And literally, there was nothing he could do about it, because there was no validation process, no central money transferring platform, no way they could validate who owned the game— nothing.”
To solve that problem, IX Studio built the first ever Roblox acquisition platform, which Hamilton said will likely be released around March. The platform validates that users actually own the game they’re attempting to sell, and then opens up a bidding and buying process. Payment is held until the software determines that the buyer officially owns the game.
All of IX Studio’s own games are free. In-game purchases supply about 45% of the startup’s revenue, while the rest comes from brand integration and obtaining royalty and equity in games they build for other companies.
Coming full circle
Hamilton has been gaming on Roblox since he was nine. Now, working as a CEO, balancing classes and supporting his family as a father and fiancé, he’s built a career within the gaming industry.
And because of his experience as a consumer of video games, Hamilton said that he is able to see the importance in doing something different than other companies.
“We don’t mind losing money to do something different, and to do something that’s against the trend,” Hamilton said. “Because we want a long-term spot on this platform.”
That said, the startup is still building strategically. Hamilton recently took advantage of the mentorship and community support offered by the FCAT Fellowship program. (GrepBeat has also covered fellow cohort members Scale Social AI, Celestic, Baby Bumps, Deliveri, Elroi, and Ver Coaching).
QUICK BITS
Startup: IX Studio
Founder: Jahmir Hamilton (CEO)
Founded: 2023
Team size: 4 (with 180+ contracted)
Location: Durham, NC
Website: www.ixstudiodev.com
Funding: Raising pre-seed
Looking forward, the studio’s developers plan to push the boundaries of game visuals while staying true to their main focus: finding unique Roblox solutions for Roblox problems.
“That drive inspires our developers to get outside of their comfort zone in development, but it also kind of just inspires the community around us to see that you can have success on this platform without chasing the trend,” Hamilton said.
Those who are interested in IX Studio’s platform are encouraged to visit the founder and company on LinkedIn, or check out their website.
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