From left to right: Dan Fiden of FunPlus, Clinton Foy of CrossCut Ventures, Martin Rae of AIAS, and Chris Fralic of First Round Capital.
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With $25 billion in exits in 2016, a few VCs remain laser-focused on gaming

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 1 min

Game company acquisitions have seen a boom this year, with $25 billion in mergers and acquisitions so far to date. China’s Giant acquired social casino game maker Playtika for $4.4 billion, Tencent bought 84 percent of Clash Royale maker Supercell at a $10.2 billion valuation. But investments have dropped off, and many one-time game investors have moved into investing in non-game augmented reality or virtual reality startups.

It seems like a disconnect. At GamesBeat 2016, we asked a panel of seasoned venture capitalists why they keep investing in games when other VCs have moved to other pastures in search of unicorns.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.