Kek Entertainment has raised $3 million in pre-seed funding to make mobile action games. Former executives at Pixonic and My.Games founded the Cyprus and Moscow company.
While there, the founders created the popular War Robots title, a multiplayer mobile shooter game with more than $500 million in revenues. The investment shows that Eastern Europe continues to be a hotbed for new game studios. Overall, the region has more than 5,000 game studios, according to The Games Fund, which participated in the round.
Now CEO Georgy Egorov and chief operating officer Oleg Poroshin are leading a new studio that will make multiplayer mobile games. The first title is a competitive mobile action game with deep tactical elements. They started the company in September and are hiring.
The funding came from The Games Fund (TGF) and Play Ventures. Maria Kochmola, the cofounder of The Games Fund, will be speaking at our GamesBeat Summit Next event on November 9-10.
Both Egorov and Poroshin worked together as CEO and COO of Pixonic from 2019, leading the growth of War Robots to more than 200% revenue growth. Now they’re leading a distributed team.
“We had a lot of fun working at Pixonic, achieved tremendous results, and we are thankful to our team and My.Games for all the experience and support,” said Egorov, in a statement. “Now we are ready to launch our own company in the most exciting and fastest-growing entertainment niche — competitive multiplayer games.”
He added, “Our targets are to build a dream team and create a breakthrough game utilizing all our experience and insights. We believe that teaming up with TGF and Play Ventures — founder-friendly investors who understand video games as developers — is a perfect fit for us.”
Kochmola said in a statement, “We’ve seen Georgy and Oleg in action, leading a top-notch team of War Robots, one of the most successful multiplayer mobile games on the market, and making it a global success. They are one of the best founding teams in the region, and we are honored that, among many options, Kek chose TGF as their partner for this adventure.”
Harri Manninen, founding partner at Play Ventures, added “We were blown away by Georgy, Oleg, and the KEK team from the very beginning. Their insights from Pixonic and their experience with War Robots, their takes on innovating in the space, and their ability to execute as world-class gaming operators impressed us. We’re excited to be supporting Kek in their quest.”