Geek startups zone - Game Industry Conference, OCT 21th-24th, Poznań

Geek StartUPs \ Feedback Battle Royale

Highlights

2025’s winner walked away with real investment.
Invaluable feedback from people who actually buy and build such solutions.
Keep your booth for four days of GIC, win or not.
Investors are international and bring real budgets.

Partners

Game Industry Conference 2026 \
Geek Investment Forum, sixth edition \
Geek StartUP Zone, third edition \

FeedbackBattleRoyale

Eight startups take the GIC Feedback Battle Royale Stage, then sit down at eight tables of practitioners. Only one wins the Battle Royale. Everyone walks out with more usable feedback than a year of cold emails will ever produce, and with a booth in the Geek StartUP Zone for all four days of Europe’s largest game development conference.

Why this competition and not another one

Feedback worth more than applause

Most pitch contests put you in front of people who nod politely and never think about your product again. GIC brings together practitioners who have the problem you are solving, the budget to fix it, and the authority to decide.

They will tell you within fifteen minutes whether your solution survives contact with a real production pipeline. That answer is the prize. The booth, the stage and the awards sit on top of it.

3,400+ professionalsDevelopers, studio leaders, producers, technical decision makers and marketers from across Europe, in one venue for four days – international from the first minute.

960+ companiesFrom solo studios to listed publishers. Many of them are the B2B customer you have been trying to reach by cold email.

50+ countriesRepresented among these attendees and countries. The GIC brings internationality instantly.

Investors in the roomThe Gamedev Investment Summit runs alongside the Geek StartUP Zone. Funds from 11 countries come to GIC specifically for gametech deal flow.

An industry that buys earlyGame developers adopt new tooling faster than almost any other sector and they work internationally from day one.

What you get

Four days of visibility, one day of pressure

The Geek StartUP Zone hosts as many startups as the quality of applications justifies, so a strong year means a bigger zone. The Feedback Battle Royale stage stays at eight. Zero risk either way: you keep the booth and the exposure whether or not you win.

Every startup in the zone

A booth for the full four days of GIC, also visible to 68,000+ visitors of the adjacent PGA festival
Conference passes for the founding team
Direct access to B2B buyers, partners and studio leads
Your profile in GIC communications and the post event report

The eight on stage

A slot on the GIC Feedback Battle Royale Stage in front of a live audience
Mentoring rounds with practitioners and investors, at every table in turn
The winner announced from the stage at the final
Prizes for the winner and the runners up
Coverage in tech and gaming media after the event

Around €5,000 in prizesFunded by the event sponsors and split between the winner and the runners up, plus legal, marketing, and expert support for the winning team.

2025 winner

CompanyLudus AI
ProductAI copilot for Unreal Engine
Result1st place, ahead of HAIP and KIVO
AfterInvested in by Hard2Beat, AMD partner support

Ludus AI walked in with a pitch and walked out with a round

Ludus AI builds an AI copilot for Unreal Engine: text to Blueprint, Blueprint to C++ and back, 3D assets, project analysis, bug detection. In October 2025 they were one of eight startups on the Battle Royale stage.

They pitched and listenedFive minutes on the Feedback Battle Royale Stage, then every table in turn. Real questions, real objections, in public.

They wonFirst place at the final, ahead of HAIP and KIVO.

The room turned into a cap tableHard2Beat, a fund present at the Battle Royale, invested. AMD extended partner support to Ludus AI and to HAIP.

The round closedLudus AI went on to close one of the largest startup rounds in Polish gamedev in years.

“Feedback Battle gave us a chance to show what we had built to investors and to the people who actually make decisions in gamedev, and to gain both social proof and a very broad set of opinions. The format is far more valuable than a single threaded 1:1 pitch. For us it meant a new technology partner, introductions to future investors, and feedback we eventually turned into one of the biggest startup rounds in Polish gamedev in years.”

Who we are looking for

Tech startups with a reason to be in gaming

You do not have to make games. You do have to be useful to the people who do, to be building something their audience will care about, or to work close enough to games in engine, interface or audience that gamedev practitioners’ experience actually transfers to your product: think VR and AR, tools built on Unity or Unreal, mobile apps, simulation and digital twins, serious games in health or education, dual-use and defense tech running on game engines, or virtual production for film. Pre-seed, seed and Series A are all welcome. A working prototype or MVP is expected and everything on stage happens in English.

Priority goes to gametech and AI projects, meaning tools that shorten production, cut cost, or open a market.

Gametech
AI and machine learning
Development tools and platforms
Analytics and data
B2B software
VR, AR, XR
AdTech and marketing
HealthTech
Industry 4.0
EdTech
FinTech
Dual-use & defense tech
Other disruptive tech

Format and rules

How the day runs

The Battle Royale runs on one day of the conference. Selected startups are announced on 5 October, and the exact battle day is confirmed in one of the next announcements, well before GIC on 21–24 October.

21–24 OctoberYour booth is open in the Geek StartUP Zone throughout GIC. Demo, sell, meet, recruit.

MorningAll eight startups pitch for five minutes each on the GIC Feedback Battle Royale Stage.

Eight roundsFifteen minutes at each mentor table. Every startup meets every table.

FeedbackEvery table tells you what they really think. That is what you came for.

The finalOne winner picked by the expert jury, announced from the stage, prizes handed over, best mentor recognised.

Ground rules

Everything runs in English. At least one team member stays for the whole competition day, and the booth has to be staffed across all four days, because the visibility only works if somebody is standing in it.

We pick the eight from the applications, looking at how new the solution really is, how much impact it can have on the industry, how far the product and the team have actually come, and whether it can scale.

It is a Battle Royale, so only one startup wins it. The other seven leave with eight rounds of blunt, specific feedback from people who build and buy this software for a living, which is the part that keeps paying off after the conference ends.

Eight slots on stage. One short form.

Tell us what you build, what makes it different, what your team has done before and what you need right now. Attach a deck and send it. Applications close 30 September 2026.

Mentors and partners announced through the autumn

Mentors are practitioners: entrepreneurs, marketers, product and business people, investors. The 2026 line up and the event partners are being confirmed now and published in stages.

Want to mentor or partner the zone, or have questions about applying? Write to robert@gic.gd