Alltopstartups » Social games

9 Startups Raised Over $78 Million This Week

Thomas Oppong — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 19:01:26 +0000

Quixey, which is developing a search engine for mobile, desktop, web, and browser apps, raised $3.8M. The series A funding round was led by U.S. Venture Partners and W.I. Harper Group.
Kenandy, a developer of cloud-based manufacturing, inventory management, engineering, purchasing, production, and requirements planning software, secured $10.5M in a Series A funding round. The round was led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
MapR Technologies, which develops a version of open source distributed computing software Apache Hadoop, scored $20M in a Series B funding round. The round was led by Redpoint Ventures.
Scientific Conservation, Inc., a provider of building energy management software, raised $9.6M in a third round of venture capital funding. The funding was led by Triangle Peak Partners.
E la Carte, the maker of a consumer-facing tablet for the restaurant and hospitality industry, scored $4M in a funding round from Lightbank, the venture capital arm of Groupon founders Eric Lefkofsky and Brad Keywell.
RootMusic, the developer of social music app BandPage for Facebook, raised $16M in a Series B round of funding. According to the company, the round was led by GGV Capital.
GoodGuide, a provider of the green and social quality information on products and companies, raised another $5M in funding. Details on the funding have not yet been announced by the company.
Hive Media, a developer of social games geared around movies, television, and brands, secured $1.5M in a funding round, according to angel group the Keiretsu Forum. The funding round also included The Angels’ Forum, Band of Angels, and Golden Seeds.
CloudOn, a developer of mobile productivity apps for smartphones, raised $7.7M, a Series A preferred round for the firm. The new funding included Rembrandt Venture Partners and Foundation Capital.

Google To Shut Down Slide Apps(A Company Google Bought For $200M A Year Ago)

Thomas Oppong — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 22:42:17 +0000

Google is shutting down all but one of Slide’s social networking apps(Just a year after Google bought Slide for more than $200 million) and saying goodbye to two of its leaders, including its founder, Max Levchin.

Slide, which was founded by Max Levchin, a PayPal co-founder, makes virtual goods and social games that people play on social networking sites. For example, on Slide’s SPP Ranch, Facebook users can raise virtual animals and sell them for virtual currency.

Max Levchin, Slide’s founder, who was also a founder of PayPal, will leave Google, the company confirmed on Friday. In a blog post, Slide’s team said that “We wanted to give you all advance notice that in the coming months, a number of Slide’s products and applications will be retired. This includes Slide’s products such as Slideshow and SuperPoke! Pets, as well as more recent products such as Photovine, Video Inbox and Pool Party.”

Google will begin to shut all but one of Slide’s products, including Slideshow, SuperPoke! Pets, Video Inbox, Pool Party and Photovine, a mobile photo-sharing app that was released to the public just last week.

wooga, Online Social Games Developer Secures $24 Million Series B Funding

Thomas Oppong — Tue, 31 May 2011 16:20:51 +0000

Wooga, a developer of online social games, announced today a $24m Series B investment led by Highland Capital Partners. Tenaya Capital and existing investors Balderton Capital and Holtzbrinck Ventures also participated in the funding round.

In conjunction with the financing, Fergal Mullen, General Partner at Highland, will join wooga’s Board of Directors. wooga’s games already attract 30 million players a month, and this funding will turbocharge the company’s production of a new generation of engaging and entertaining social games.

wooga, accessible games for Facebook users to play with their friends. The team has created some of the world’s most popular social games, including Monster World, Diamond Dash and Bubble Island. wooga has already doubled its user-base in 2011 from 14m to 30m monthly active users and overtook five US-based competitors to become number three on the Facebook platform.

wooga was founded in January 2009 by Jens Begemann (CEO), Philipp Moeser (CTO) and non-executive founder Patrick Paulisch.

Kabam Secures Eye-popping $85 Million To Take Hardcore Games To The Next Level

Thomas Oppong — Thu, 26 May 2011 11:26:29 +0000

Social game developer Kabam has secured an eye-popping $85 million to become the Zynga of hardcore social games. Kabam has already raised $30 million few months ago. Kabam’s making a big bet that traditional gamers are slowly going to give up their PCs and consoles in favor of web-based games.

The whopping $85 Million funding round was co-led by Google Ventures and Pinnacle Ventures. Performance Equity and SK Telecom Ventures joined the round, as did previous investors Canaan Partners, Redpoint Ventures and Intel Capital.

Kabam makes a suite of social games for Facebook and the web.Kabam focuses on the “hardcore” gamers — the male teens that play Halo, Call of Duty and Bioshock. Some of Kabam’s top games include Glory of Rome, Dragons of Atlantis and Kingdoms of Camelot. Dragons of Atlantis, the company’s most popular game, has around 4 million monthly active users.

“Kabam provides hardcore gamers using social networks two important benefits – a highly immersive, engaging game experience along with frictionless pricing and convenient access. We’ve tapped into a major shift in hardcore gamer behavior, as we create compelling social gaming experiences for traditional console and PC gamers,” said Kevin Chou, CEO of Kabam.

The company has grown from 25 to over 400 employees in the past 16 months on the strong performance of its Facebook game lineup, Kingdoms of Camelot®, Dragons of Atlantis™, Glory of Rome™ and Global Warfare™.

CrowdStar To Take On Zynga With $23 Million Funding From Intel Capital

Thomas Oppong — Tue, 24 May 2011 01:00:00 +0000

Crowdstar was founded in 2008 and is one of the top Social Gaming companies in the world. Crowdstar has secured $23 million from Intel Capital in its first major funding round. Intel is joined by Time Warner, Chinese game developer The9 and NVInvestments. CrowdStar, is best known for producing Facebook social games Happy Aquarium, It Girl, Happy Pets and Mighty Pirates.

The new investment is intended to help CrowdStar double its headcount of more than 100 employees as it looks to grow in the social gaming space beyond Facebook into mobile and into more international markets.CrowdStar is focusing on three main avenues to expand in the coming year—international availability of games, through mobile development and through talent acquisitions.

According to AppData, CrowdStar is the fifth-biggest game developer on Facebook when measured by monthly active users, with 29 million users a month. Zynga has 248 million active monthly users. CrowdStar’s new investment can help increase its user base.

Intel made a previous gaming investment last year in OpenFeint, adding to its growing portfolio of gaming companies with an emphasis on social and mobile. Intel also invested in Digital Chocolate’s $12 million round earlier this year and last year invested in Gaikai, a streaming cloud gaming service, as well as gaming start-ups Transgaming and Vostu.

“Social games are a fast-growing category on connected computing devices, and we believe CrowdStar is well positioned to continue to capitalize on this trend,” said Mike Buckley, managing director of Intel Capital.

9 Social Games Built on Top of Facebook And Have Been Acquired

Thomas Oppong — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 10:48:41 +0000

A lot developers have taken the opportunity Facebook offers and have built impressive, engaging games. Social games on platforms like Facebook should be engaging, entertaining and should lead to the discovery of new friendships and relationships. Thousands of apps are now available on Facebook and only a handful see regular repeat customers.

These social games have recorded thousands of regular players and most importantly they have been acquired.

# Playfish was acquired by EA for $300M
# fluff Friends has been acquired by SGN
# Esgut has also been taken over by SGN
# Playdom has acquired Trippert Labs and Green Patch
# YoVille has been acquired by Zynga
# Serious Business (makers of Friends for Sale) acquired by Zynga
# Challenge Games has been acquired by Zynga for an estimated $20.5 M.
# Mytopia was sold to 888 for up to $48 M
# Playdom acquired Hive7 for an undisclosed amount

King.com Extends Its Social Games and Tournament System To Facebook

Thomas Oppong — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 21:26:50 +0000

Social games company, King.com, today announced that it will now be offering its games and tournament system on Facebook. By taking its games and tournament system to Facebook, King.com brings people across the globe together to play, compete and interact with friends, while collecting credits to be used for power-ups, conducting micro-transactions for virtual gifts and showing off their skills.

King.com offers more than 200 exclusive games in 10 languages across the globe. King.com is the exclusive provider of online games for leading portals and websites such as Yahoo!, MSN, NBC, CBS, Real Networks, Orange, RTL, Sat 1, Endemol, MTV3, Lifetime and other leading media companies.

How king works

# You can pick and play any game you like on the site. Every month they add new games to ensure that you never run out of great games to play.
# You pick the game, they match you with a player of the same abilities so the games are always fun and fair. No need to wait, just play and we handle everything.
# In case you want to play for real cash prizes, there are game tournaments and they pay out €300,000 in daily prizes. If you prefer to just kick back and have fun you can play for jewels and glory and win items to style your player profile.

Social Games And Apps Platform Viximo Adds 3 Top Games To Its Network

Thomas Oppong — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 21:27:20 +0000

Social games and apps platform Viximo has recently added the popular Ravenwood Fair (LOLapps) as well as Backyard Monsters (Casual Collective) and Resort World (Game Insight) to its fast-growing games platform.

Viximo is a platform that connects social app and game developers with numerous social networks across the web. With Viximo’s platform app and game developers get access to over 100 million users across multiple social networks with a single easy implementation.

Viximo’s platform distributes leading social games to an international and fast growing catalog of partners, matching great games to the top social networks beyond Facebook. Optimizing for play, virality, discovery and monetization, Viximo is able to facilitate custom strategies for companies that need to establish their businesses beyond a single website.

“Viximo’s gaming partners have a unique opportunity to reach new audiences, be ahead of the curve in discovery and management of their diversification strategies,” Dale Strang, CEO, Viximo, said. “We are excited to add hot titles such as Ravenwood Fair, Backyard Monsters and Resort World to our platform.”

Titled “LOLapps’ Ravenwood Fair has attracted nearly five million monthly active users. Deceptively in-depth, the simulation game challenges players to keep back an encroaching forest by chopping down trees, delivering a near-constant supply of resource-based quests to complete.

Backyard Monsters (more than 3.2 million active users on Facebook) and simulation game Resort World (nearly three million active users) will also be signed to Viximo and supported with technology platforms enabling them to live on a number of social networks.

Social Gaming Venture Fund Launched

Thomas Oppong — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 23:36:28 +0000

DeNA, the Japanese mobile social gaming company, has announced its contribution of $27.5 million towards a new venture capital fund called Incubate Fund No. 1 Limited Partnership. With its investment, DeNA holds an 83% stake in the fund.

Based in Tokyo, the fund is designed to invest in companies working in open social media, with a preference for social gaming startups. According to the press release, DeNA will invest in game developers that can be included in their mobile gaming platform, Mobage-Town. The company says it is targeting app developers who are interested in both domestic and global markets, and the fund will be aimed largely at those gaming companies at the seed round.