Thousands of people are shipping small games right now — Three.js scenes, R3F toys, Godot web builds, Bevy WASM experiments — most of them built in an afternoon with an AI in the loop. Almost all of them are seen by nobody. The distribution options are a tweet that dies in an hour, a subreddit that hates self-promotion, or an ad account you'll never get approved.
gamerank.lol is the dumbest possible alternative. It's one leaderboard. Your position is your cumulative spend. Pay $5 and you're on it. Pay a dollar more than the game above you and you're above it. No ranking algorithm, no reviews, no upvotes to farm, no API keys, no revenue share, no account.
The front page crown gets expensive fast — that's the point, and it's the part that goes viral. But one bid also ranks you on your engine's board, and those start empty. Being #1 in Bevy or #1 in LÖVE can cost less than lunch, and it's a better audience: people browsing an engine board have already decided they like that engine.
It's an auction with a leaderboard bolted on, and the leaderboard is the ad. Nobody clicks a banner. People do click #1.
Money buys position, not traffic. Position tends to produce traffic, but nothing here is a guarantee, and the rules say payments are final. The plays counter next to every listing is the real number of click-throughs we sent — it's public precisely so you can decide whether a rank is worth it before you buy one.
Built as a weekend project. Concept lineage: outbid.lol, and every pay-to-rank board that came after it. hi@gamerank.lol