Economies of ScaleTurn 12 plots of land into an industrial empire.
Economies of Scale is a free browser game about building a business in a shared world economy. You decide what gets built, what it makes and who you sell it to — farms, factories, power stations, department stores. The world runs on its own clock, so your company goes on producing and earning while you are asleep, at work, or playing something else.
Free, in your browser. No download, no grind.
How it works
The whole game, in four steps
There is one rule underneath everything else: your buildings make goods every hour, you sell the goods, and the cash pays for more buildings.
Found a company
Pick a name and one of 15 real countries. You start with $50,000 in cash and 12 plots of land, and every plot holds one building.
Build something
A sheep farm, a wind farm, a steel mill, a department store — 186 buildings across 13 industries, each with its own recipe of what it consumes and what it makes.
The world does the rest
On the hour, every building you own pays its costs, consumes its inputs and produces its outputs — logged in or not. Your time goes on the decisions, not on watching a progress bar.
Sell what you made
List goods on the market and any other company can buy them. Finished goods are worth more than what went into them, and that gap is your profit.
Supply chains
Everything is made out of something else
There are 130 goods in the game and almost none of them appear out of thin air. Wool comes off a sheep farm. A loom turns wool into fabric. A clothes factory turns fabric into clothes. A department store sells the clothes to the public for cash.
The longer the chain, the more the end of it is worth — and the harder it is to keep fed. Almost every processing building also needs power, and power is a good like any other: build a wind farm, or buy it from a company that did. Anything you cannot make yourself, somebody else is already selling.
The hourly tick
What one hour does to your books
Every company in the world is settled in the same moment, at the top of the hour, UTC. This is what happens in it.
The world
Fifteen real countries, and it matters which one you pick
Your country sets your wages, your weather, your corporate tax rate, the state of its economy and how much its government will lend or spend. Cheap labour and a rich local market rarely come together.
Depth, when you want it
None of this is in your way on day one
A guided tutorial walks you from your first building to your first sale, one step at a time. Most steps earn an achievement that pays a cash bonus, with another for finishing. What follows is what is waiting once the basics are boring.
A real market
Every trade is with another player. Post offers, place bids, and read the price history of any good before you commit.
Conglomerates
Found one or apply to join: a shared bank, a member list, a membership fee, and offers you can restrict to members only.
A stock exchange
Float your company, buy shares in someone else's, and collect dividends from a business you never had to build.
Debt and credit
Borrow against your assets — how much depends on a credit rating you earn. Or lend, by buying another country's government bonds.
Pollution has a price
Dirty production is taxed every hour. A national park and a carbon capture plant let you buy some of it back.
15 specialist divisions
Accounting, payroll, marketing, logistics, market research, mergers and acquisitions, government relations. Each one unlocks a part of the game.
59 achievements
From your first building to your first million. Each one pays a cash bonus straight into the company.
A leaderboard
Every company in the world, ranked by value, with a public profile for each one. Yours included.
Questions
Before you sign up
Do I have to sit and wait for the hour?
No — that is what the clock is there to save you from. Your buildings run without you, so you cannot fall behind by closing the tab and there is nothing to grind. Most of playing is a few minutes of decisions: what to build next, what to sell, what to buy before somebody else does.
Do I need to know any economics?
No. If you can follow “this costs less than what it makes,” you can play. The tutorial introduces tax, credit, power and the rest only once each one starts to matter to you.
What does it cost?
Nothing. It runs in the browser you are reading this in, there is nothing to install, and there is nothing to buy.
Am I playing against other people?
Yes. One shared world, one company per account, and every good you buy was produced by somebody else's buildings. You can also team up: a conglomerate pools a bank and trades internally.
Is it finished?
It is in open beta — playable end to end, and still being built on. Signing up now means founding your company before the world fills up.
Your first building can be earning by the next hour
Sign up, name your company, pick a country, put something on the land. The world takes it from there.