Global game platform GXC has raised $4.73 million in funding to fund multiple game services, including community feedback tools for mobile game makers.
GXC is the holding company of game service platform G.Round, a community-based tool aimed to help studios refine and polish their upcoming video games with market-data feedback.
Konai Partners, Hana Financial Investment Co., Ltd, SangSang Ventures, and Enlight Ventures led the round. Other investors also participated.
With its previous funding round of $2.25 million from DS Asset and DS & Partners, GXC’s total valuation has now reached $36 million.
Origins
The South Korea-based GXC got started in 2015 with the creation of the Global Top Round (GTR) accelerator for game startups.
It grew for a few years, and it became one of the company’s arms. It hosted a conference every year and it would sift through a few hundred applicants and come up with a 60 or so that would present at its conference.
“Every single year, we saw a trend,” said Rick Nahm, the chief operating officer of GXC, in an interview with GamesBeat. “We also got big data — a good set of data. Then we started the parent company in 2019.”
They were on the lookout for a new kind of business in games to meet unmet needs in the market. About a year ago, the company created G.Round to test games and offer community feedback to improve existing games.
“We raised the round to build a proper platform for G.Round,” Nahm said.
G.Round
The investment follows a milestone for G.Round, which has seen more than 150,000 gamers across 240 countries using it since its alpha launch in July 2020. With G.Round, game developers can improve the development process and completion of their projects before launch while also targeting global markets using test data.
The platform produces valuable user data to help studios get publisher and investor interest. So far, 90 projects have been tested globally through G.Round.
Based on this investment, GXC aims to expand its global game testing to the mobile sector by launching a service for G.Round by the end of this year. In addition, after testing, GXC plans to provide a data subscription service to publishers who want to source global game content in earnest from next year through the advancement of the online data analysis system for user/region preferences, and to date GXC has already secured partnerships with 40 global publishers as partners.
Global Top Round
Another core part of GXC’s business includes gaming accelerator program Global Top Round (GTR). The accelerator chooses ten gaming startups from around the world every year and supports their growth with investment and guidance.
GTR plays an increasingly important role in establishing G.Round in the global market. GTR has already invested in more than 50 game companies in the United States, Brazil, France, Germany, Korea, Sweden, Spain, Italy, and Malaysia.
GTR will reveal multiple new titles and publishing partnerships later this year.
Nahm said that the need for game market data and community-based feedback has never been higher. GXC collects instant in-depth data for global analytics.
“One of the reasons we came up with the idea of G.Round was because with GTR we were running the program for five years. We wanted to see why many devs were not succeeding with publishers,” Nahm said. “From G.Round, what you get is community feedback. You get to know which market or which country most likes your game. You can use that data set to go out to the world.”
Overall, GXC has about 32 people, mostly in South Korea and Bangkok.