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AdRadar / Cases / fly.pieter.com

Game · ad-funded · Feb 2025

A flight simulator written with Cursor in about three hours became an ad business

Pieter Levels built a free multiplayer browser flight sim in public, sold billboard space inside it to sponsors, and reported $72K a month within two weeks of launch.

Evidence: MediumRevenue and player numbers are the founder's own posts, relayed by press. None are audited.
~3 hto a first playable versionClaimed by the founder
$72K/moad revenue, 10 Mar 2025Founder post, via dev.ua
320Kplayers in 17 daysFounder post, via dev.ua
31Kplayers in a single day (record)Founder post, 10 Mar 2025

At a glance

Builder
Pieter Levels (levelsio), a solo founder with a large X following.
Built with
Cursor and Three.js. The WebSocket server was reportedly generated by Grok 3; ChatGPT was used to remove duplicate features (dev.ua).
Time to first version
About three hours, by his own account.
Business model
Free to play. Billboards, later blimps and hot-air balloons, sold directly to sponsors.
Distribution
A build-in-public thread of roughly 70 posts, a reaction from Elon Musk, then press coverage.

Timeline

  1. 22 Feb 2025Levels starts building, "mostly live on X". The originating post reached about 1.58M views.
  2. ~26 Feb 2025Public launch. Elon Musk reacts to the game.
  3. 4–5 Mar 2025Rear-view mirror added. 404 Media reports $50,000 a month "its creator claims".
  4. 10 Mar 2025Post: record 31K players in a day, 296K people have flown, $72K per month, a new non-tech sponsor.
  5. 12 Mar 2025Post: 320K players and $87K in 17 days. This became the "$1M ARR in 17 days" headline.
  6. 20 Mar 2025Avgeekery reports $38K in the first ten days and 17 sites advertising.

How it was built

  1. 1One prompt to Cursor started it: a 3D flying game in the browser, with skyscrapers.
  2. 2Iterations were added live: shootable balloons, collapsing buildings, mobile support, a GTA-style look, then multiplayer.
  3. 3Multiplayer was the hard part. Hits and dogfights did not work at first; the WebSocket server was reportedly produced with Grok 3.
  4. 4Later additions included Mars, a rear-view mirror, and purchasable ad blimps and balloons.

Why it took off

  1. 1The product is understood in five seconds: open the page, type a name, fly. No signup.
  2. 2Monetisation needed no mature product. Sponsors paid for attention on a tech-heavy audience.
  3. 3Timing: it was among the first well-known vibe-coded games, which made it a news story.
  4. 4Building in public turned each iteration into content that sold the game.
Be careful with

Read the numbers with these caveats.

  • "$1M ARR" is an annualisation of a two-week number, not revenue received.
  • The $87K figure is read three ways by different outlets: monthly revenue, 17-day total, or profit.
  • The founder's existing audience did a lot of the work. Most builders do not start there.
  • dev.ua notes the game lacks depth and unique mechanics. This case covers revenue through spring 2025.
§ EvidenceWhat the sources say
Confirmed by a source we read
  • levels.io post exists: dated 22 Feb 2025, titled "…reached $1M ARR in 17 days".
  • The post's origin tweet shows about 1.58M views.
  • The author claims the saga passed 100M views on X.
Reported figures
  • $72K/month (10 Mar), $87K and 320K players (12 Mar), 31K players in a day.
  • $38K in ten days and 17 advertising sites (Avgeekery, no source).
  • Three-hour build time.
Sources disagree
  • $87K read as monthly revenue, as 17-day revenue, or as profit.
  • 31K is players per day, but Avgeekery cites 17,000 concurrent without a source.
  • Avgeekery's lede says "thousands monthly", its body says $5,000 a month, and it also reports $38K in ten days.
§ Check it yourselfWith AdRadar

Don’t take the headline on faith. Watch fly.pieter.com yourself.

See what fly.pieter.com is doing in public: its ads, the pages they lead to, how its site changes and what people say about it.

Partial fit. The game sells ad space rather than buying it, so its own ad archive may be empty. Use sponsors and Reddit.

Ads

Archives what a company runs on Meta, Google and LinkedIn: new, stopped and long-running ads.

Add the sponsors you spot on the billboards as competitors and see what they advertise elsewhere.

Landing pages

Reads the pages its active ads link to and flags headline, offer and price changes.

Landing tracking starts from active ads, so follow the sponsors' pages rather than the game's.

Site pages

Reads the public sitemap: new and updated pages, page types, publishing rhythm.

Check fly.pieter.com's sitemap, if it has one, for new pages and how often they appear.

Reviews and mentions

Collects Trustpilot reviews and Reddit mentions, and can summarise the complaints.

Search Reddit mentions after the viral spike to see how players talk about it now.

Track fly.pieter.com in AdRadar

You can repeat this.

The parts that do not depend on a famous founder.

  1. 1Pick a one-screen product that works without signup.
  2. 2Post every iteration from day one.
  3. 3Sell sponsorship directly to a few buyers before building a self-serve ad system.
  4. 4Do not promise audience-free results; this one started with a large audience.
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Sources

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