Virtual currency balance exploits going undetected because transaction history is stored in a way that makes it impossible to reconstruct what happened to a player's account?
Live ops team unable to run a limited-time sale without an engineer changing database records because there is no tooling for the game team to manage offers?
In-Game Economy Platform
Custom in-game economy infrastructure for game studios who need virtual currency management, item catalogues, purchase processing, and the transaction audit trail that fraud investigation and economy balancing both require.
A game economy is not just a currency and a shop. The interactions between premium currency, earned currency, item drop rates, spend sinks, and promotional offers create a system that can inflate or deflate in ways that damage retention -- and a platform that gives the game team visibility and control over those dynamics.
Multiple virtual currency types with configurable earn rates, spend rules, and cap management
Item catalogue with bundle definitions, limited edition flags, and platform-specific pricing
Purchase processing with iOS App Store, Google Play, and Steam receipt validation
Transaction ledger recording every economy event for fraud investigation and economy balancing
RaftLabs builds custom in-game economy platforms for game studios -- multiple virtual currency types, item catalogue management, iOS App Store and Google Play receipt validation, transaction ledger with fraud detection, and economy analytics. Most in-game economy projects deliver in 10 to 16 weeks at a fixed cost.
100+Software products shipped
·FixedCost delivery
·10-16Week delivery cycles
·24+Industries served
In-game economy is a system -- and systems break in non-obvious ways
A virtual currency that can be duplicated. An item that can be purchased, refunded, and re-purchased to accumulate more than intended. A promotional offer that applies multiple times due to a race condition. A drop rate that produces far more high-value items than the economy model intended. These are not hypothetical -- they are the failure modes that emerge when in-game economy is treated as a database feature rather than an economic system requiring its own integrity constraints.
Custom in-game economy development means the currency flows are tracked with ledger semantics, the transaction validation prevents the class of exploits that client-trusting systems allow, and the tooling gives the game team the visibility to catch economy problems before they spread.
What we build
Virtual currency management
Multiple currency type support -- premium currency (real money purchase), earned currency (gameplay rewards), event currency (limited-time), and any other types your economy design requires. Currency balance management with the atomicity guarantees that prevent balance duplication when a transaction is interrupted. Earn rate configuration for each currency source -- daily login rewards, match completion, achievement unlock, and any other earn events your game supports. Spend rule management defining what can be purchased with each currency type. Currency cap management for earned currencies where an upper balance limit is part of the economy design. Expiry management for currencies or balances that lapse at the end of an event period. The currency layer that behaves correctly as an economic primitive, not just a number in a database.
Item catalogue and inventory management
Item catalogue covering every item in your game with its attributes, rarity, associated currency costs, platform-specific pricing, and availability rules -- on-sale permanently, limited edition, seasonal, or event-exclusive. Bundle definition for item packs with the bundle contents, pricing, and any one-per-account or limited-quantity rules. Player inventory management tracking which items each player holds with the quantity for stackable items. Item grant and revocation for promotional grants, error corrections, and support actions. Cosmetic vs functional item classification with the access controls appropriate to each. The item catalogue that is the authoritative record of what exists in your game and what it costs, maintained in one place rather than split between client-side data and backend logic.
Purchase processing and receipt validation
In-app purchase processing for iOS App Store, Google Play, and Steam with server-side receipt validation to verify that a purchase actually occurred before granting currency or items. Purchase deduplication preventing a receipt from being applied more than once. Refund detection for reversed transactions on iOS and Android with the appropriate currency or item revocation. Chargeback handling workflow for disputed payments. Gift card and promotional code redemption with the redemption rules and limits enforced server-side. Platform-specific purchase flows handled correctly for each store's requirements. The purchase processing layer that means the currency or item is granted only when the payment is verified, not when the client claims it happened.
Transaction ledger and audit trail
Append-only transaction ledger recording every economy event -- every earn, spend, grant, revoke, and purchase -- with the player, the item or currency, the quantity, the timestamp, the transaction type, and the source that caused the event. Balance reconstruction from ledger so any player's balance at any point in time can be verified by replaying the ledger rather than trusting a stored balance figure. Fraud investigation tooling allowing support staff to view a player's complete transaction history and identify the source of an unexpected balance. Economy audit reports summarising currency sources and sinks across the player population for balance analysis. The transaction record that makes fraud investigation a ledger query rather than a database excavation.
Economy analytics and health monitoring
Daily active buyers and revenue metrics with cohort breakdowns by player segment, acquisition channel, and game version. Conversion rate funnel from player to first purchaser, showing the drop-off at each step in the purchase flow. ARPU and ARPPU trends with the segmentation that shows which player segments are monetising above and below average. Currency source and sink balance -- the ratio of currency being earned to currency being spent -- with the alert thresholds that signal inflation or deflation developing in the economy. Item sell-through rates showing which catalogue items are purchased and which are ignored. The economy analytics that give the game team the data to make pricing and drop rate decisions rather than guessing.
Live ops and promotional tooling
Limited-time offer management for discounts, bundles, and exclusive items with the start time, end time, player segment targeting, and per-account purchase limits configured without a code deploy. Flash sale tooling for time-sensitive offers with countdown display data served via the API. Battle pass management covering the pass tiers, the rewards at each tier, and the player's current progress. Seasonal shop management for rotating item availability. Promotional code generation and management for influencer campaigns, support credits, and compensation grants. The live ops tooling that decouples the game team's promotional calendar from the engineering team's deployment schedule.
Frequently asked questions
Ledger-based balance management with atomic transactions is the foundation. Rather than storing a currency balance as a single mutable number, the system maintains an append-only ledger of every transaction and derives the balance from the ledger sum. This eliminates the race conditions that allow currency duplication when multiple requests modify the same balance simultaneously. All balance changes go through validated transaction paths with the business rules enforced server-side -- the client cannot grant itself currency by sending a crafted request. The specific exploit mitigations are scoped during discovery based on your game's economy structure.
Each platform provides a receipt or purchase token that the client receives after a successful in-app purchase. The backend validates this receipt directly with the platform's verification API before granting the purchased currency or item. This means the grant happens only when the platform confirms the payment, not when the client claims the purchase succeeded. Duplicate receipts are detected and rejected. Refunded purchases are detected via platform notifications and the appropriate balance adjustment is made. The validation approach for each platform is confirmed during discovery based on your target platforms.
Yes. The economy system integrates with existing player profile infrastructure via API -- it reads player data to determine eligibility for offers and passes currency grant events to the profile system for progression updates. If you have an existing inventory system or currency system that needs to be migrated rather than replaced, we assess the migration scope during discovery. Economy systems built on existing infrastructure are scoped based on what the integration requires.
A core economy covering virtual currency, item catalogue, purchase processing, and a transaction ledger typically runs $30,000 to $60,000. A more complete platform with economy analytics, live ops tooling, promotional code management, and battle pass infrastructure typically runs $60,000 to $120,000. Fixed cost agreed before development starts.
Game Analytics Platform -- event tracking, retention analysis, funnel reporting, and economy health monitoring
Talk to us about your in-game economy project.
Tell us your game type, your monetisation model, and what your current economy infrastructure can't handle. We'll scope the right platform and give you a fixed cost.