By Daniel Hunter
Space Ape Games, the London-based mobile games developer behind successful title Samurai Siege, has unveiled a first look at its second game, Rival Kingdoms: Age of Ruin and announces an additional funding round to help drive growth and recruit London’s top gaming talent.
The latest $7m round is led by Northzone and includes existing top tier gaming and tech investors, Accel Partners, Initial Capital and Connect Ventures — the investors behind companies such as Facebook, Spotify, Supercell, Playfish and Rovio. The investment takes the company’s total fundraising to date to $11m.
The funding announcement comes as the company unveils its second title, Rival Kingdoms: Age of Ruin, following the globally successful Samurai Siege, which has achieved over $20m in aggregate revenue, and over 10 million downloads since its launch just over a year ago.
As a profitable company, Space Ape will use the additional funding both to bolster its marketing capabilities and accelerate hiring plans, with up to 30-40 hires on the cards in the next 6 months. Space Ape has set up an internal recruiting team and will be on the hunt for London’s top development talent.
“We think gaming will be the defining entertainment medium of the 21st century,” Space Ape Games Founder and CEO, John Earner commented. “We’ve built one of the best teams in the world to make the highest quality, most commercially successful mobile games, and we continue growing. The latest funding will help us realise this vision as we speed headlong into our growth plans for 2015.”
Previous Board Observer, Jeppe Zink of Northzone will join the Space Ape Board, whilst former Zynga and Electronic Arts EVP Barry Cottle will take up an advisory role. Finally David Gardner OBE joins the Board in an advisory capacity.
Jeppe Zink added, “We’ve backed Space Ape Games since before the launch of Samurai Siege and have delighted in watching their success to date. The team, whose members are behind some of the biggest games on Facebook and beyond, has big growth plans in the pipeline and I look forward to playing a bigger role in that.”
Rival Kingdoms: Age of Ruin is a bold new take on the mobile RTS genre with a heavy emphasis on explosive action, intense multi-player combat, collaborative guild-based play, and a rich backstory. Pre-registration is now live for the mid-core, multi-player, RTS game, which is set to launch globally on iOS and Android in early 2015.
Space Ape enlisted a superstar team to build its latest game, with pedigrees ranging from Sonic the Hedgehog to Tomb Raider, plus a host of development talent from top gaming companies including Playfish and Mind Candy.
John Earner commented: “We’re thrilled to unveil Rival Kingdoms. We listened to our players and developed a game we think breaks the mould in the mobile RTS genre. We want to lead the way in making core games accessible on mobile devices in a way that accommodates our players’ busy modern lives.”
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