Mochi Media sets up $10M fund to invest in indie games

Mochi Media and its parent company Shanda Games are announcing today a $10 million fund that will invest in promising Flash and social game developers.

Mochi runs an ad network and social game platform for Flash game makers. So the company has a vested interest in making sure that Flash game developers thrive. The money will be used to support indie developers through sponsorship, licensing and publishing deals.

The company announced the fund at its second annual Flash Gaming Summit, a conference focused on fostering the growth and success of the Flash game community. The San Francisco conference is sold out. Mochi’s technology monetizes free flash games. It does so by tracking Flash game usage and wrapping the games in ads. It has nearly 15,000 games on 40,000 web sites in its network. Those games are played by 150 million monthly active users. The money here could go a long way, since it often takes $100,000 or less to develop a Flash game.

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. 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.