PlayFab raises $3.1 million for back-end service for game developers

PlayFab announced it has raised $3.15 million in a second round of funding for its infrastructure for connected PC and mobile games.

James Gwertzman, CEO of Playfab.
James Gwertzman, CEO of Playfab.

The company is one of the important new players that helps small and medium-sized independent game companies — as well as major game publishers — operate online games more easily on just about every platform, including PlayStation, Xbox, PC, iOS, Android, and various virtual reality platforms.

“Our vision hasn’t changed since we started PlayFab in 2014,” said James Gwertzman, CEO of PlayFab, in an email to GamesBeat. “We provide a back-end platform for game developers that provides the tools and services they need to operate their games post-launch.”

PlayFab previously raised a round of funding in February 2015. Now it has more than 350 live games with more than 26 million monthly active players.

Overall, the company works with more than 1,000 game studios and has more than 120 million player accounts in its system. Customers include Rovio, Capcom, Bandai Namco, Atari, Miniclip, Obsidian Entertainment, Tripwire Interactive, and Kongregate.

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.