My.Games Venture Capital has invested $3 million in three new game studios in Eastern Europe. The studios are Voxter, Tworogue Games, and Wideview games.
Part of Moscow’s Mail.ru Group, My.Games has been investing in game studios. It has also invested recently in Expresso Publishing in Amsterdam and Pizza Club Games in San Francisco. About 75% of My.Games’ revenue comes from mobile games.
The company didn’t say how much each studio raised. In all three deals, MGVC acquired minority stakes in the studios with options to purchase control later. The investment volume since MGVC was founded exceeded $20 million according to the InvestGame platform. Eastern Europe has thousands of game studios, according to The Games Fund. (Maria Kochmola, cofounder of The Games Fund, will speak at our upcoming GamesBeat Summit Next online event on November 9-10).
“We look at the market as a whole and invest in studios that work in genres with high reach and revenue potential,” said MGVC executive producer Nikita Matsokin, in a statement. “At the same time, we specifically focus on genres that we do not yet have in the My.Games portfolio, which could significantly expand our expertise. One of our development goals is to diversify the gaming portfolio to the fullest with the possibility of further integrating the partner studios’ products into the group’s single ecosystem.”
Tworogue Games was founded in Moscow and currently has 17 employees. The core team was formed back in 2016 and has been working together for five years. The studio is developing a mid-core mobile free-to-play hero collector RPG. Tworogue Games plans to create a unique experience in the battlers genre using new combinations of core gameplay and progression. The game is planned for release in 2022.
WideView Games studio was founded in 2016 in Minsk. The team of 20 is focused on mobile game development. Their Tamadog project was named Apple’s Game of the Year in the category Tech & Innovation — AR: Russia. The studio is developing two mobile casual free-to-play games scheduled for next year. WideView Games experiments with gameplay and meta-mechanics to create a unique and engaging gaming experience for casual audiences.
And Voxter was founded in 2020 in Moscow. The studio with 16 employees is working on the Vox app for voice dating. To date, Vox has more than 14 million voice recordings, or 8.5 years of listening to voice messages and more than three million couples. Voice communication is unique in a way it offers greater immersion in communication for the participants, as well as greater interactivity. For MGVC, investing in Vox means expanding its investment areas with a possible future synergy of the group’s entire product portfolio.
Elena Grigorian, chief marketing officer at My.Games, said in a statement about Voxter, “The gaming industry is a very multifaceted market that includes not only games but also near-game technologies, services, and projects. As a venture investor, we consider all studios and teams whose solutions can be potentially useful and interesting for creating new gaming products. We are observing and studying various opportunities and services that can enrich the experience of our players.”
According to InvestGame, in the first half of 2021, MGVC was one of the top 15 largest investment funds in the world. Over four years since its foundation, MGVC has consolidated eight studios and its portfolio now includes more than 40 studios in total.
The company has 150 titles in its portfolio including War Robots, Hustle Castle, Rush Royale, Left to Survive, Skyforge, and Allods Online. Meanwhile, My.Games operates games such as Warface.