Over $350M invested into social games, VWs, casual MMOs & games

Tracking VC funding deals is a great way to keep a pulse on what’s considered HOT in any given market. VCs start investing when the market starts showing real promise – for major profits in 4-7 year time horizon. As a rule of thumb, VCs are looking for deals where they could make 10x their original investment. So, if there is a number of VCs investing into a segment, you can be sure it is HOT.

Everyplay’s market segment is the mix of  social games, virtual worlds, casual MMO and casual games. space. Tracking the VC deals shows continued validation for this market, which what you would expect when the user figures continue to grow very rapidly. Everyplay is also likely to seek out VC funding eventually, so it is important to us to know which VCs are active, what kind of deals are happening and how much money is being raised.

The table shown below is compiled from my own research into these VC deals. It is by no means 100% comprehensive. First caveat: it is rather US focused as the PR machine works best there. VentureBeat, Virtual Worlds Management and the usual suspects TechCrunch, GigaOm, ReadWriteWeb and Mashable do a good job in covering these deals. As Europe is almost completely under-represented and a lot of early stage deals don’t get publicized at all (regardless of where they happen), I’m sure I’m missing a whole of VC deals from this list.

When interpreting the top line figure of $350 million, you should note that half of it was invested into two companies: 9You ($100 million) and Big Fish Games ($87 million). Regardless, it is clear that the VC activity in this space is constant at a roughly “2-5$ million invested a week” level.

The deals

Venture capital funding for social games, virtual world, casual MMO and casual games. Updated 21th Sep 2009.

Date	Company	Invested	Type	Series	Country	Lead investor
Sep-08	Challenge Games	$10,0	Social games	Series B	USA	Globespan Capital Partners
Sep-08	Big Fish Games	$83,0	Casual games	Series A	USA	Balderton Capital
Sep-08	Hollywood Interactive	$5,0	Social games	Unknown	USA	BlueRun Ventures
Sep-08	RobotGalaxy	$5,0	Virtual World	Series B	USA	Bachmann Industries
Aug-08	Nonoba	1,3 €	Casual games	Series A	DK	Mangrove Capital Partners
Aug-08	LOLapps	$4,5	Social apps	Series A	USA	Polaris Venture Partners
Aug-08	Webcarrz	$4,0	Social games	Series A	USA	Meakem Becker Venture Capital
Aug-08	Knowledge Adventure	$5,0	Virtual World	Unknown	USA	Azure Capital Partners
Aug-08	Dizzywood	$1,0	Virtual World	Series B	USA	European Founders Fund
Jul-08	Challenge Games	$4,5	Social games	Series A	USA	Sequoia Capital
Jul-08	Zynga	$29,0	Social games	Series B	USA	Kleiner Perkins
Jul-08	Playfish	$1,0	Social games	Bridge	UK	Accel Partners
Jul-08	Gaia Interactive	$11,0	Casual MMO	Series C	USA	Institutional Venture Partners
Jul-08	Six Degrees Games	$7,0	Virtual World	Series A	USA	Prism VentureWorks & Clearstone
Jul-08	Social Gaming Network	$3,0	Social games	Unknown	USA	Jeff Bezos Expeditions
Jul-08	Riot Games	$7,0	Casual games	Unknown	USA	Benchmark Capital
Jul-08	8D World	$1,0	Casual MMO	Series A	USA	Spark Capital
Jun-08	I’m in like with you	$1,5	Social games	Series B	USA	Spark Capital
May-08	Social Gaming Network	$15,0	Social games	Series A	USA	Greylock Partners
Apr-08	Serious Business Inc	$4,0	Social games	Series A	USA	Lightspeed Ventures
Apr-08	Kongregate	$3,0	Casual games	Series B	USA	Jeff Bezos Expeditions
Apr-08	Akoha	$2,0	Mixed reality social game	Seed	USA	Multiple angels
?.2008	Playfish	$3,0	Social games	Seed	UK	Accel Partners
?.2008	RobotGalaxy	$7,0	Virtual World	Series A	USA	Bachmann Industries
?.2008	Hangout Industries	$6,0	Virtual World	Series A	USA	Polaris Venture Partners & Highland Capital Partners
Q1/2008	9You	$100,0	Virtual World/Casual Games	Unknown	China	Temasek Holdings
Q1/2008	Chapatiz	$0,5	Virtual World	Seed	French	Angel Investors
Q1/2008	Dizzywood	$1,0	Virtual World	Series A	USA	Shelby Bonnie
Q1/2008	EveryScape	$7,0	Mirror World	Series B	USA	Dace Ventures
Q1/2008	Fluid Entertainment	$3,2	Virtual World	Series A	USA	Trinity Ventures
Q1/2008	Handipoints	$0,8	Virtual World	Seed	USA	Charles River Ventures
Q1/2008	Metaversum	several m€	Mirror World	Unknown	USA	Balderton Capital
Q1/2008	Numedeon	$1,0	Portfolio of Virtual Worlds	Series B	USA	BankInter’s Venture Capitol Group
Q1/2008	Sparkplay Media	$4,3	Casual MMO	Series A	USA	Redpoint Ventures & Prism VentureWorks
Mar-08	Alamofire	$2,0	Social games	Series A	USA	Founder’s fund
Mar-08	PopJax	$4,7	Social games	Series A	USA	Draper Fisher Jurvetson
Feb-08	Flowplay	$3,7	Hybrid MMO / casual games	Series A	USA	Intel Capital
Feb-08	RocketOn	$5,0	Social Games	Series A	USA	D.E. Shaw Group
Jan-08	Zynga	$10,0	Social games	Series A	USA	Union Square Ventures
Jan-08	Rebel Monkey	$1,0	Casual MMO	Series A	USA	Redpoint Ventures
Dec-07	Playfirst	$16,5	Casual games	Series C	USA	DCM
Nov-07	Apaja Online	1,7 €	Casual games	Series A	Finland	Martinson Trigon Venture Partners
Oct-07	GameLayers	$0,5	Social games	Series A	USA	O’Reilly Alphatech Ventures
Sep-07	Watercooler	$4,0	Social games	Series A	USA	Canaan partners
Sep-07	RocketOn	$0,8	Social Games	Seed	USA	Unknown
Aug-07	Kongregate	$5,0	Casual games	Series A	USA	Greylock Partners
Aug-07	D2C	$6,0	Casual games	Series A	USA	Rubicon Ventures
Aug-07	Conduit Labs	$5,5	Social games	Series A	USA	Charles River Ventures & Prism VentureWorks
Jul-07	Three Rings	$3,5	Hybrid MMO / casual games	Series B	USA	True Ventures
Mar-07	Flowplay	$0,5	Hybrid MMO / casual games	Seed	USA	Angels
Mar-07	Gaia Interactive	$12,0	Casual MMO	Series B	USA	Benchmark Capital
Dec-06	Metaplace	$5,0	Casual MMO platform	Series A	USA	Charles River Ventures
Dec-06	D2C	$1,5	Casual games	Seed	USA	Rubicon Ventures
Jul-06	Sulake	6 €	Virtual World	Series C?	Finland	Movida Group
?.2006	WeeWorld	$15,5	Virtual World	Series B	UK	Accel Partners
Jan-05	Big Fish Games	$8,7	Casual games	Angels	USA	Multiple angels, two rounds
Jan-05	Sulake	18 €	Virtual World	Series B?	Finland	Benchmark Capital
?.2005	WeeWorld	$5,5	Virtual World	Series A	UK	Benchmark Capital
2000 – 2004	Sulake	? €	Virtual World	Seed to Series A	Finland	3i, Elisa & Taivas

Notes and commentary

• Charles River Ventures spoke prominently for this segment, especially their partner Susan Wu did a lot to promote the segment in year 2007.  Susan left CRV earlier in 2008 to join Ohai, a stealth online gaming company, and CRV’s public profile has been a lot more quiet since.
• Lightspeed Venture Partners is active and very prominent thanks to their partner Jeremy Liew, who has probably one of the best blogs about this segment.
• SGN and Zynga are locked in a deadmatch to own the social games space. Good for companies looking to be acquired.
• EDIT (2008-09-25): I originally reported Sulake‘s investment as 22 M€, which was from Kauppalehti, the leading Finnish business magazine, who had calculated the total losses incurred by Sulake from its founding in year 2000 to end of year 2007 using public records. The Series B and C rounds already amount to 24 M€, and the Seed – Series A is definitely several million euros, so it wouldn’t be a big leap to guess that the total investment would be around 30 M€
• EDIT (2008-09-24): I mistakenly reported a series B for Apaja‘s, which hasn’t happened. The table above has been corrected.
• EDIT 2 (2008-09-25): Corrected funding for Akoha to 2 M$, corrected lead investor for SGN’s 15 M$ round to be Greylock Partners
• EDIT 3 (2008-09-25): Corrected funding for Conduit to 5,5 M$, corrected Sulake’s founding rounds, added Hangout industries, added investors for Conduit, Sparkplay and Six Degrees, corrected Metaplace’s funding date to Dec-06.
• I’ve omitted skill gaming, pureplay publishers/operators, core gaming (e.g. like Trion World Network, which has raised over $100 million), middleware and other related industries to try to focus on developers and self-publishing companies.

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