Flaregames said today it will invest €20 million ($21 million) over the next 18 months in a new game incubator.
Through the company’s Flare Accelerator, the Karlsruhe, Germany-based company will devote its full range of publishing expertise to emerging free-to-play mobile game developers with a new engagement model tailored to mid and late stage productions. From launch, the €20m investment will support the development of games signed up for the program, with significant marketing budgets in addition to this figure.
The core aim of Flare Accelerator is to help developers to validate their game’s business case quickly. Flare Accelerator is part of a Flaregames company strategy to shift more heavily toward product validation processes, welcome even more world-class talent into its publishing stable, and most importantly – ship more awesome free-to-play mobile games.
The Flare Accelerator program kicks off in March 2017, with Flaregames encouraging interested developers to reach out next week at the Game Developers Conference 2017. Moving forward, Flaregames will be on the lookout to sign more developers throughout the course of 2017 and beyond.
“The huge abundance of product opportunities in mobile has created a buyer’s market for publishers and put developers at a disadvantage,” said Fraser MacInnes, Flaregames’ head of portfolio management, in a statement. “The Flare Accelerator will create a new engagement model that tilts the odds back in the developer’s favor.
“By helping developers validate their game’s business case viability as quickly as possible, as well as identifying problem areas early on, we enable developers to concentrate on what developers do best – making fun, captivating experiences. Meanwhile, we as Flaregames continue to follow our core objective of building up a family of world-class developers.”