List of Top 7 Funded Game Development Companies in 2019

The gaming industry is only becoming fatter and more lucrative, with more than 2.5 billion users now. According to Newzoo, a reputed market research firm, the video game industry is expected to grow from $137.9 billion in 2018 to more than $180.1 billion in 2021. Now, with such a huge monetization potential (be it for Mobile Games, PC games, Esports or Consoles), the gaming industry has become an attractive sector for investments. From Crowdfunding to Angels, Seed Funds, and VCs, funding is increasingly giving that support to game companies and developers they need to build and launch great games. Investors also eventually make big bucks from it. So, without wasting any time, I am listing out below the top seven funded game companies of 2019.

Disclaimer: The top five funded game companies in this article are solely based on my research on data from reputed sources and may vary with the exact ones. The reason being businesses usually don’t disclose the specific details of such arrangements and gaming is no different. Nonetheless, the names below deserve a mention for making the gaming industry a hot spot for investments.

Here are 7 game companies that received the highest funding in 2019

1. Gen.G ($46mn)

Gen.G, a California-based premier global esports organization established in 2017, raised $46M in an unknown venture series in 2019. The backers included Will Smith, Keisuke Honda’s Dreamers Fund, Dennis Wong, Michael Zeisser, David Rogier and various Silicon Valley Funds. Gen.G was also ranked sixth in the 2019 Forbes list of the world’s most valuable esports companies. With the funding amount, Gen.G which already has a dominating presence in the world’s leading esports markets (Asia and the US), the esports company will make its foothold even stronger in the global market for video games.  Some part of the funding was also diverted towards development of a youth esports academy and open headquarters in Los Angeles in July 2019. 

2. Mino Games ($30mn)

Founded in 2011 in Montréal, QC, Mino Games is a mobile games developer for iOS and Android. Mino Games got a $30mn backing in a corporate round funding in 2019 from Tilting Point, a mobile publishing and development partnership company. In the largest funding commitment so far, Tilting Point’s $30mn were dedicated to cover user acquisition costs for Mino’s Cat Game. The timing of the funding was also great as it was announced just after the Cat Game closed its soft launch period and released globally. The game developer has also launched titles including Mino Monsters and Mino Monsters 2.

Tilting Point CEO Kevin Segalla said in a press release, “We really fell in love with charm, the colourful aesthetic, and the ever-changing gameplay of Cat Game, so we are excited to turbo-charge its growth, and we are certainly looking forward to a long and successful relationship with Mino​ Games''. Some of the best angel investors, institutional investors, and gaming companies from across the world are now funding Mino Games, which has a strong user base of over 15 million people.

3. Bossa Studios

Bossa Studios, which is popular for zany titles like Surgeon Simulator and I Am Bread, raised $30 mn in a Series B round of funding led by Netease. Atomico, London Venture Partners and Makers Fund have also previously funded the London-based game developer in Series A funding, helping it collect $10mn to cement the future success of the studio. The latest funding will boost the company's plans to expand the reach in China.

Bossa has already planned its first-ever Chinese release with Hogwash, a  multiplayer title that pits a farmhand against a group of mischievous pigs. Hogwash is currently the part of Apple’s cloud gaming service Apple Arcade and with its release, Bossa became one of the first game makers to launch a game on the platform. The game studio is now eyeing to tap the huge gaming market of China starting with Hogwash.

4. tinyBuild GAMES ($15 mn)

tinyBuild GAMES, a Washington-based independent video game developer and publisher, received $15 million in Series A funding. The company didn’t disclose the details of the investors, but the money raised was intended to be used for hiring more staff both at junior and senior level, build new franchises and innovate gameplay in new games. tinyBuild Games has so far built Hello Neighbor, Clustertruck, Punch Club, Party Hard, Pandemic Express, Graveyard Keeper and many more.

Prior to the $15 mn funding, tinyBuild also got the $3.75 mn backing of Makers Fund (whose portfolio includes Bossa, Typhoon, Superdata, and more) to support new projects and expand old ones like its stealth horror game Hello Neighbor. 

5. Redhill Games (11.4 mn)

Redhill Games, a free to play PC game studio headquartered in Helsinki, Finland, ran its first round of funding in 2019 and got the $11.4 m backing of Makers Fund, Play Venture and Kowloon Nights in 2019. The game developer was founded in 2018 by veterans of companies like Remedy Entertainment and Wargaming. The funding was directed towards hiring more staff and supporting the first big title of Redhill Games.  Matias Myllyrinne, the current CEO of Redhill Games and the former CEO of Remedy Entertainment and the former head of global development for Wargaming, said that their first big title will be a “new, fresh take on tactical shooters". The game which is expected to be revealed in 2020 will be free to play, with focus on co-op play and use a “games as a service” model.

6. Teatime Games ($9mn)

Teatime Games, an Iceland-based game studio, raised $9 million in Series A round backed by Index Ventures and Atomico (the investors behind Supercell/Bossa/Rovio). Teatime Games’ major focus till now is on reinventing social games for mobile by allowing players to interact with one another, face to face, while playing. The game studio has also built a mobile social gaming platform Teatime Live (for both Android and iOS), which uses Augmented Reality (AR) to launch games that put the social back in mobile gaming.

Teatime debuted the platform in 2019 with Hyperspeed, a fast and furious space racing game which allows players to race against each other and see the reactions of their opponents in real-time. The game features a built-in video chat, Snapchat-stye face filters and allows players to use their earned game faces on other games as well. 

Thor Fridriksson, co-founder and CEO of Teatime Games, said in a statement, “Everyone at Teatime is incredibly excited to launch a new way to play mobile games, and we hope to see other games studios building interactive experiences on the platform. Hyperspeed is one example of a game using Teatime Live that we’ve created, but we expect to work with other game studios on many different genres.”

The successful completion of a $9 million Series A funding round has provided significant support that the game studio needed to launch several other games on Teatime Live in the near future. 

7. Ys Net ($6mn)

Shenmue III, created by Ys Net and published by Deep Silver, is an adventure game that was released in 2019 for Windows and Playstation 4. Shenmue III is now the highest-funded video game on Kickstarter, having raised $6,333,296 which is over three times the set goal of $2,000,000. The video game raised $2 million in just a matter of seven hours and ended up at over $6 million. The belated open-world sequel Shenmue III  takes you on a journey deep into rural China where you take the role of Ryo Hazuki, a Japanese teenager who is hellbent on finding his father’s killer and avenge his brutal murder.

The famous Japanese game designer Yu Suzuki conceived the idea of Shenmue III, which had the backing of Japanese tech giant Sony and Shibuya Productions, but that was majorly intended for Shenmue III‘s production, publishing and marketing. The original Shenmue cost a startling $70m to make and it was not possible to build Shenmue III on a fraction of that budget, said Suzuki.

Kickstarter proved to be a great platform to collect funds and build a sequel that the fans had waited so long for. All the money collected from the campaign was purely used for game development.  Having reached the Stretch Goals of over $5 million on Kickstarter, Suzuki was able to add extra quests, events, and an all-new gameplay feature to bring a sequel true to its name. Kickstarter has become one of the best fund-raising platforms and you can see here the list of top 5 most funded Kickstarter games.

So, above was the list of top-funded game companies in 2019 which shows how much support game companies are getting from investors worldwide to scale up the entertainment industry. When it comes to the contribution of video games in the entertainment industry, movies and music don’t even generate half the revenue video games are earning. People not only love playing video games but watching as well which is why esports are so much on the rise. Funding is very much making it possible for game developers to create amazing games and earn big by entertaining people.

Are you looking out for an expert team of game designers and developers to build your game from the ground up? Logic Simplified, an India-based game studio, offers top-notch game development services to help build your game from scratch and market it fast for early users to create a buzz. Once you have good enough users, you can further expand your game by presenting it to investors and bring the money it will need to become bigger and bigger.

Write to us at enquiry@logicsimplified.com and we promise to get back to you shortly to provide you with a tailor-made solution for your gaming needs.