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Fortnite, the free multiplayer survival game, earned an astonishing $ 1 billion from in-game virtual purchases alone. Now, others in the gaming industry are experimenting how they too can capitalize on new trends in games.
Mythical Games, a stealth startup today with $ 16 million in Series A funding, is embracing a future in games where user-generated content and intimate connections between players, content creators, brands and developers are the norm. Mythical is using its venture capital infusion to develop a line of PC, mobile and console games on the EOSIO blockchain, which will also be open to developers to create games with "player-owned economies".
The company says an announcement is coming on its initial line of games.
Mythical is led by a group of veterans of the gaming industry. Its chief executive is John Linden, former head of the studio at Activision and president of the seismic games acquired by Niantic. The rest of his C-suite includes chief compliance officer Jamie Jackson, another former head of Activision's studio; chief product officer Stepan Cunningham, former director of product management at Yahoo; and head of blockchain Rudy Kock, former senior producer of Blizzard – the Activision branch known for World of Warcraft. Together, the team worked on games like Call of Duty, Guitar Hero, Marvel Strike Force and Skylanders.
The Galaxy Digital EOS VC fund led the Mythical round. The $ 325 million fund, launched at the start of this year, is focused on expanding the EOSIO ecosystem through strategic investments in EOSIO blockchain-based startups. Javelin Venture Partners, Divergence Digital Currency, OKCoin cryptocurrency exchange and others also participated in the round.
It's no surprise that investors get excited about the boom in the game of chance given the success of Epic Games, Twitch, Discord and others in space.
Epic Games collected a $ 1.25 billion round at the end of last month thanks to the cultural phenomenon that its game, Fortnite, has become quite fast. KKR, Iconiq Capital, Smash Ventures, Vulcan Capital, Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed Venture Partners and others took part in this round. Discord, a chat application for players, raised $ 50 million in April with a valuation of $ 1.65 billion from Benchmark Capital, Greylock Partners, IVP, Spark Capital and Tencent. And Dapper Labs, best known for the blockchain-based game CryptoKitties, also picked up a VC round this year – a $ 15 million grant led by Venrock, with the participation of GV and Samsung NEXT.
In total, the VC has invested $ 1.8 billion in gaming startups this year, according to PitchBook.
