Rune raises $8M to build social multiplayer gaming platform

Rune (formerly Dusk), a new social platform for building and playing multiplayer games, announced today that it has raised $8 million in a new funding round. Makers Fund and byFounders led the round, with participation from gaming founders Ben Liu (PocketGems), Thomas Hartwig (King) and Adi Rathnam (Kamkord). The company plans to use the funding to build out the platform.

Rune offers a platform for game developers to create social multiplayer titles on mobile using the Rune SDK, which handles latency and networking and works cross-platform on web browsers. During the beta period, devs made games across multiple genres. For players, Rune offers a social experience that includes voice chat, customizable avatars and group chats among other social features. According to the company, beta users have played Rune’s games on voice chat for 50 million minutes.