Qloud Games announced today that it has raised $5 million in its seed funding round, which it plans to use to build its cozy MMO, Loftia. This follows its successful Kickstarter, where it raised $1.3 million while also putting together a community of 600,000 players across social media. Bitkraft Ventures and GFR Fund led the round, with Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), 1UP Fund and Gaingels participating.
Loftia is set in a solarpunk world where players work together to build communal, eco-friendly spaces; farming, foraging and crafting to build new sustainable tech. Qloud’s founders, Michael Su, Martina Qin and Eric Mallon, tout the game’s relaxed, combat-free feel. The game’s cozier features are oriented towards social projects, with players working together to build a better world, both within the game and in the real world.
Su told GamesBeat in an interview: “At the beginning, we were being realistic about the scope of the game that our tiny team could create. But once we saw the demand, we thought if we managed to raise a certain amount from Kickstarter, we could take the game to the next level — from a popular indie project into something even more that can compete at the top level.”
Building a cozy game for a big community
Both Qin and Su told GamesBeat that their development efforts have been done in collaboration with the game’s growing community, as Qloud puts out community updates and incorporates feedback from its primarily young adult audience. There is a noticeable audience for such relaxed experiences, as the Roblox game Grow a Garden, a similarly cozy communal farming sim, saw a player peak of 22 million.
Qin told GamesBeat in an interview, “This investment shows that cozy, social gaming is going to be a big part of the future of gaming… We started documenting every part of our journey, letting our audience into this game development with us, almost building the game almost hand-in-hand. I think people like that aspect of Loftia. They feel like they have a say in the game. That sense of being in this together is one of the core reasons why we’ve built this community and why they’ve stayed engaged. I would say we have one of the most wholesome communities out there!”
Jasper Brand, partner at Bitkraft, said in a statement, “Michael and Martina have put everything into Loftia—investing over $500,000 of their own capital earned from a Canva ESOP, rallying a record‑breaking Kickstarter, and building a 600,000‑strong community before launch. With a successful Alpha already behind them, funding secured through launch, and a real distribution edge in the massive but underserved cozy genre, they’re poised to bring live service, cross-platform, and social play to a new generation of players—and build a world‑class studio from Australia with global impact.”