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It’s like the Power Glove, but for VR

Published January 6, 2023

Nintendo’s Power Glove was, to quote one of the eighties’ finest films, “so bad.” The NES peripheral transfixed a generation of youngsters, only to later realize that the “bad” in this instance should perhaps have been taken a bit more literally. Nintendo ultimately sold 1 million of the things, but the technology just wasn’t there, and the dream controlling gameplay with a robo-glove appeared to have died along with it.

With the newfound (relative) prominence of virtual reality, perhaps it’s time give the idea another go. Certainly interacting in this way makes a heck of a lot more sense in VR than it does an 8-bit side scroller. This is the promise behind ContactGlove, a new product from the Japanese firm Diver-X, which debuted this week at CES.

Image Credits: Brian Heater

In addition to picking up an Innovation Award at the show, ContactGlove is also the subject of an ongoing Kickstarter campaign, which has already passed its $200,000 goal, with 16 days left to go. The product combines hand tracking with haptic feedback to give the user a more hands-on approach to interacting with the virtual environment around them.

After calibrating the system, ContactGlove tracks finger movements for more natural interaction, as well as button/stick movements made with the hand for a more traditional gaming experience. Battery life is around two hours with haptics on and eight hours with it turned off. You can also hot swap the battery to keep it up and running.

The product claims to be a cheaper/more accessible approach to VR gloves than what’s currently out there. Of course, when dealing with VR hardware, “cheaper” is certainly relative. The firm puts the final retail price of the product at just under $500 for the pair.

It’s compatible with HTC Vive headsets, as well as Steam VR hardware. The company is also making an SDK available for Unity and Unreal Engine developers to make better use of the system. Diver-X expects to start shipping in July, at which point we’ll find out what kind of bad ContactGlove truly is.

It’s like the Power Glove, but for VR by Brian Heater originally published on TechCrunch

Nvidia helps Hyundai, BYD, Polestar join the in-car gaming revolution

Published January 3, 2023

Nvidia’s on demand cloud gaming service, known as GeForce Now, is headed to select Hyundai, BYD and Polestar electric vehicles, the company said Tuesday ahead of CES 2023 in Las Vegas. The announcement, while lacking details on timelines or vehicle models, is notable because it marks the first time Nvidia is expanding its GeForce Now service beyond phones, smart TVs and computers and into cars.

Nvidia’s in-car games offering comes as automakers sink more resources into so-called “software-defined vehicles,” in hopes of finding new sources of revenue beyond building, selling and financing cars, trucks and SUVs. While Tesla was the first to pioneer in-car gaming and recently added Steam games to its vehicles, other automakers have picked up the pace. A number of automakers, including Stellantis, announced at CES last year plans to add Amazon Fire TV streaming into upcoming vehicles. In October, BMW partnered with AirConsole to bring games to its BMW 7 series EVs this year.

One can see the appeal of integrating such entertainment with newer vehicles, particularly for electric vehicles. Have to wait 30 minutes to charge your car? Put your feet up and stream some Wheel of Time. Got hyper kids in the back of a long car ride? Distract them with Cyberpunk 2077 or The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Automakers and suppliers may also be looking towards to a future when driving tasks become more automated.

Danny Shapiro, Nvidia’s VP of automotive, told TechCrunch customers could stream games into stationary vehicles that are connected to WiFi or even cars in motion if there’s a high bandwidth connection. To make this happen, Nvidia leverages its large network of servers and partner networks around the world to enable game-playing in the cloud. Games are essentially being played on a server in one of Nvidia’s data centers and then streamed to someone’s device.

“It’s like Netflix but interactive,” Shapiro said in a recent interview. “It’s not just buffering content and sending it down. Somebody would have a gaming controller, and those button clicks are transmitted to the server. The game is played, rendered and then streamed back to the device. So there’s a lot of technology we’ve developed to basically reduce the latency and enable somebody to play a game in the cloud with the exact same experience as they would expect on their PC or running on their local TV.”

Hyundai, BYD and Polestar all rely on Nvidia’s Drive platform for infotainment and autonomous vehicle development, but GeForce Now is hardware agnostic, said Shapiro.

GeForce Now features more than 1,000 titles from leading PC game stores like Steam, the Electronic Arts app, Ubisoft, Epic Games Store and GOG.com, as well as free-to-play games like Fortnite, Lost Ark and Destiny 2, according to Nvidia.

Nvidia helps Hyundai, BYD, Polestar join the in-car gaming revolution by Rebecca Bellan originally published on TechCrunch

Magic Eden exec sees NFT gaming like the ‘early days of mobile gaming’

Published December 20, 2022

Blockchain games have grown exponentially over the past year as a new and innovative alternative to the traditional gaming world. While the two areas have been widely separated, some market players see an integrated future.

“I was around in the very early days of mobile gaming, right after the iPhone came out, the App Store came out,” Chris Akhavan, chief gaming officer at NFT marketplace Magic Eden, said to TechCrunch. “I remember the attitude back then amongst traditional gaming companies was that mobile games were stupid.”

These gaming conglomerates viewed mobile games as “really small, unimpressive games” that people wouldn’t want to play, Akhavan said. “Largely, a lot of the big traditional gaming companies ignored mobile [games] for the first couple of years and that created opportunities for new mobile gaming companies like King, which is now owned by Activision, to create that margin and grow substantially.”

Bored Apes creator Yuga Labs appoints Activision’s Daniel Alegre as CEO

As that happened, big gaming companies became hyperfocused on the mobile gaming space and began acquiring smaller games to compete, Akhavan noted.

“We think that the same journey is going to happen in web3,” Akhavan said. “Over the last year, there’s been multiple billions of dollars invested in new web3 gaming studios and they’ll lead the charge here in creating the ecosystem and showing the true sides of the opportunities, which is going to be massive.”

Magic Eden exec sees NFT gaming like the ‘early days of mobile gaming’ by Jacquelyn Melinek originally published on TechCrunch

Playtika lays off 610 workers, shuts down three online gaming titles amid broader restructure

Published December 12, 2022

Playtika, the Israeli tech company that made its name through a series of wildly successful online gambling and gaming titles with hundreds of millions of players, is leveling the latest swing of the layoffs pendulum. The company today has confirmed that it is laying of 15% of its staff. Playtika currently employs 4,100, so the redundancies will impact 615 people across the company’s global footprint in Europe, Israel and the U.S.

A memo sent to employees seen by TechCrunch notes that three titles will also be sunset as it seeks to rationalize costs across the board. We understand that these will be MergeStories, DiceLife and Ghost Detective. We also understand the company is going to offer alternative roles to a proportion of employees impacted by the cuts. Playtika’s most popular titles, such as Best Fiends, have racked up at least 100 million users apiece.

”Playtika’s success is rooted in our agility, efficiency, creativity and obsession with delivering the most fun forms of mobile entertainment to our players,” CEO Robert Antokol told TechCrunch in an email in response to questions about the cuts. “We consistently evaluate our strategic plans with attention to many factors, including the economic environment. We believe the structure announced today further leverages our core strengths of delivering superior in-game experiences and scaling mobile games to global franchises in continuation of growth. Saying goodbye to talented colleagues and friends is difficult. They will always be part of Playtika’s rich history and a foundation to our bright future as we build on our reputation as a technology and entertainment powerhouse.”

The layoffs have been the subject of rumors since last week in the Israeli press — although the actual figures are higher than the 500 number getting reported.

Playtika — publicly traded on Nasdaq — has been facing an especially tough year in what has been a hard time for the tech sector overall.

The company was one of the wave of businesses that went public last year, riding on the back of a huge surge in usage among pandemic consumers cooped up at home and staying out of in-person social situations.

In its IPO in June 2021, it debuted with a per-share price of $27 and a valuation of over $11 billion to raise nearly $1.9 billion, before climbing to a market cap of over $14 billion in its first day of trading. A few months later it followed this up with a big move into “design entertainment,” buying home deco games maker Reworks out of Finland for $400 million, in cash.

But gaming has long been a business with stark rises and drops, with titles very much subject to user taste and no real guarantee that whatever gets developed next will be as big of a hit as the previous effort. Combine that with the current general depression in tech stocks, and Playtika has seen massive drops. Currently, its market cap (pre-market open on December 12) stands at $3.1 billion, with stock priced at $8.61/share as of market close on Friday.

The company also missed on earnings estimates in the last quarter. Although third-quarter revenues climbed slightly to $647.8 million versus $635.9 million in the same quarter a year ago, net income dropped to $68.2 million versus $80.5 million in Q3 2021.

Last week, one of its shareholders, Joffre Capital, pulled out of a deal to take a majority stake in the company after disputes over governance. This wasn’t cited in the memo sent to employees, and from what we understand is unlikely to have an impact on the company’s financial planning going forward, but it speaks to what might be happening in the background as the company looks to restructure its business.

It’s not game-over just yet, but online gaming is going to lose a lot more lives in the coming months.

Playtika itself had already cut 250 workers in May, Electronic Arts is reportedly looking for a buyer and Unity laid off around 200 people earlier this year — and some believe this is just the start.

Playtika lays off 610 workers, shuts down three online gaming titles amid broader restructure by Ingrid Lunden originally published on TechCrunch

Microsoft could get its first official union as ZeniMax QA testers organize

Published December 6, 2022

A group of about 300 quality assurance (QA) testers at video game company ZeniMax Media are seeking to form the first ever union at Microsoft, the parent company to their studio. ZeniMax includes subsidiaries like Bethesda Softworks and id Software, producing franchises like “The Elder Scrolls,” “Doom” and “Fallout.”

Union organizing has been on the rise in the video game industry, particularly among QA workers. QA testers at Activision Blizzard at have successfully formed unions at Raven Software and Blizzard Albany through the Communication Workers Alliance (CWA), which will also represent ZeniMax’s union. But while Activision Blizzard has attempted to stall union organizing at every turn, Microsoft pledged in June that it would not stand in the way of employee organizing. So far, Microsoft has held true to its promise (and of course, that promise will get complicated if Microsoft’s $69 billion bid to buy Activision Blizzard closes).

On Friday, union organizers opened a portal where ZeniMax QA testers can vote yes or no to a union through the end of the month. If more than half of eligible workers vote yes, then — if the company stays true to its word — Microsoft will recognize the union without turning it over to an official, bureaucratic vote with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

Zachary Armstrong, a Senior Quality Assurance Tester II at id Software, told TechCrunch that the unit is organizing to fight for better pay.

“Right now, we’re not being paid a wage that reflects the respect and the value that we bring to our company,” Armstrong told TechCrunch. “This is something that is the case across all video game QA.”

It’s not a coincidence that other major union pushes in gaming have also come from QA testers.

“QA testers are consistently placed at the bottom of the totem pole when it comes to game development, to the point that we’re not even considered game developers.” Armstrong said. QA workers rigorously test all facets of video games to identify and resolve problems that impact user experience. “That’s reflected in our pay, and that’s reflected in our work, especially with regard to crunch.”

In the lead up to a major game release, QA testers are sometimes expected to work unsustainable hours, which is referred to as “crunch.” Before announcing their intent to unionize, the first major U.S. gaming union at Raven Software went on strike to protest layoffs affecting 12 contractors — before those contracts were terminated, the QA testers had been working overtime for five weeks straight.

Armstrong expects that the ZeniMax QA testers have the votes necessary to win their union at the end of December. For now, Armstrong is optimistic that Microsoft will continue to let the workers organize without interference.

“It’s made it a lot easier to reach out to people who are more concerned about retaliation and consequences for supporting a union,” Armstrong said about Microsoft’s union policies. “We understand that it’s been a lot more difficult at other studios, and the fact that we have not received that level of resistance has been a huge relief for us.”

If the union vote passes, the QA testers at ZeniMax will have formed the first union at Microsoft, as well as the largest U.S. video game union to date.

Activision Blizzard workers in Albany vote to form the company’s second union

Microsoft could get its first official union as ZeniMax QA testers organize by Amanda Silberling originally published on TechCrunch

Google’s latest Doodle lets you create your own mini arcade game

Published December 1, 2022

Today’s Google Doodle lets you make, play and share your own mini arcade game to honor the memory of videogame pioneer Jerry Lawson. Lawson led the team that developed the first home video gaming system with interchangeable game cartridges. Today would have been his 82nd birthday.

The interactive Doodle starts off by taking you through a short experience that introduces you to Lawson and his legacy. The first part of the experience is a tutorial that teaches you about the basic controls and editing features. From there, you can navigate to five ready-to-play games. You can play the games as they are, or you can click on the pencil icon to edit them.

If you want to create your own game, you can navigate to the home screen and click on the empty cartridge icon with a plus sign on it. Once you’re done with your creation, you can use the share button to send it to your friends.

The five ready-to-play games were designed by three American artists and game designers: Davionne Gooden, Lauren Brown and Momo Pixel.

Lawson was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1940 and had tinkered with electronics from an early age. He started his career in Palo Alto, California and joined Fairchild Semiconductor as an engineering consultant. He led the development of the Fairchild Channel F system (the F stands for fun), which was the first home video game system console that featured interchangeable game cartridges, an eight-way digital joystick and a pause menu. The system paved the way for future gaming systems like the Atari, SNES, Dreamcast and more.

In 1980, Lawson left Fairchild to start his own company, VideoSoft, which was one of the earliest Black-owned video game development companies. VideoSoft created software for the Atari 2600, which popularized the cartridge Lawson and his team developed.

Google gets into the Halloween spirit with a ghostly multiplayer interactive Doodle

Google’s latest Doodle lets you create your own mini arcade game by Aisha Malik originally published on TechCrunch

This startup is bringing precision control for gamers to the humble keyboard

Published November 28, 2022

You wouldn’t drive a car or fly a plane if the only controls you had available were on/off switches for left and right or up and down, and yet that’s pretty much what gamers are stuck with when they control their virtual avatars with their keyboards. U.K. startup Peratech wants to change that with a new range of “force feedback” keyboards that are starting to turn up in Lenovo notebook computers. I spoke with the company’s CEO to learn more.

“We just launched a force-sensing keyboard. It’s not just the keys; it’s a user experience. We created a user interface that is both an application and a game bar widget so that new users can have out-of-the-box simplicity, and serious gamers get advanced controls to take the mechanics of using the keyboard,” explains Jon Stark, CEO at Peratech. “With our keyboards you have a tactile feedback loop. The keyboard knows how hard you press, and you can change that pressure profile. Say you want to have really progressive acceleration at first because you tend to hit the gas too hard when you go around corners: The profile is configurable, and influencers can configure and deliver those profiles to people, creating engagement with other followers. It goes beyond just delivering force and delivering a great user experience: I’m talking about community-based user-experience content that drives engagement and simplicity.”

The force feedback tech can be found in Lenovo’s Legion 7i and 7 gaming notebooks, which launched over the summer. To me, Lenovo isn’t necessarily the first brand that pops to mind when I think “gaming laptops,” but as a company, Peratech had a connection they could work to make these keyboards show up out in the real world.

“We have had a long relationship with Lenovo, and they really wanted to do something with the Legion to elevate it and innovate. It isn’t just for games; as we expand to a full notebook, other opportunities appeared. It works with video editing really well, for example,” says Stark, and he uses scrubbing through a video timeline as an example. “Imagine that as you scrub slower, might want want to zoom in at the same time. Imagine being able to do that just with one button and control that speed with your finger. And as you’re moving faster and pressing harder it zooms out. We are making controls where expert users would be really good with two hands, jumping back and forth to a mouse. We’re taking that cognitive load of doing all those activities and putting them into users’ hands where they can really focus on the content.”

A Legion 7i Gen 7 laptop showing off Peratech’s Hydra software, which enables gamers to configure their keyboards in great detail. Image Credits: Peratech

The team hopes that its keyboard becomes another tool in the gamers’ tool belt for increased immersion and enjoyment when gaming.

“If you have a steering wheel that is basically for F1 or Forza, you have all the controls of an F1 car, but you also have all the complexity of an F1. It is immersive. But if you then go to play Call of Duty or GTA or Witcher, you have to unplug all of that and grab a joystick. And if you’re moving from flying to walking or driving to walking — it’s kind of impossible, and something like a steering wheel makes you sort of a one-game player,” Stark points out. “The other thing to note is that you can’t use these controllers on a plane. You can’t use them on a bus. You can’t use them in a coffee shop. And so for those who are buying a notebook, that makes a really big difference.”

The laptop keyboards have 400 or so levels of pressure, which the company claims gives users a large amount of fine control. The keyboards use a thin-film layer that sits within the mechanical key structure. Between 25 and 300 microns thick, the company claims its tech can be built into pretty much every keyboard out there.

“Whar we do is we take the signal [from the keyboard] and we drive that through our force control processor. Here, we condition the signal so it’s really easy for the computer electronics to use. We also use Windows-native driver. So it’s not like the PC feels it’s being hacked or you need this specialty API. We’re using keyboard, joystick, mouse, trackpad, track stick and other drivers to be able to give that experience through a keyboard: We disaggregate the input from the way you actually use an on/off switch on a keyboard,” says Stark. “So we offer a better keyboard experience.”

The company’s tech can be described as software-enabled hardware, or hardware-enabled software, depending on the level of integration it has with a keyboard manufacturer. Peratech told me a story of how it was able to design a redesign for an existing keyboard design in CAD in just four days.

“There are a couple of different [microcontroller] chips that you could use. Depending on the architecture of the computer, you can use the embedded controller on the main board, and we have applications of both with Lenovo,” explains Stark. “You do need to have an ADC that captures the data, and then we have some processing that needs to happen, where we process the signal. And that’s what gives you the full dynamic range that you’re looking for.”

The company’s keyboard line is a pivot from its tech originally developed for smartphones, designed to add force feedback to smartphone screens. Obviously, the company is hoping the tech will catch on and show up in more applications in the near future; the team was tight-lipped on exactly where and when we might see it turn up next, but it suggested there might be automotive and smart home applications in the pipeline. For now, the Lenovo laptops are the easiest place to try it out — look for the “Force Sensor Technology” to see whether Peratech’s technology lives in its innards somewhere.

This startup is bringing precision control for gamers to the humble keyboard by Haje Jan Kamps originally published on TechCrunch

NFT marketplace Magic Eden integrates with Polygon to grow blockchain gaming

Published November 22, 2022

NFT marketplace Magic Eden is integrating with the Ethereum scaling layer-2 blockchain Polygon to dive deeper into the blockchain gaming and NFT ecosystems, the companies announced on Tuesday.

“We are excited to integrate with Polygon and continue our pursuit of a multichain future for Magic Eden,” Zhuoxun Yin, Magic Eden co-founder and COO, said to TechCrunch. “By offering this integration, we are continuing to remove any chain-specific barriers and open NFTs to the masses.”

The expansion aims to provide Magic Eden the ability to support Polygon’s ecosystem of game developers and creators. The Polygon network hosts some of the biggest web3 gaming projects and publishers like Ubisoft, Atari, Animoca Brands, Decentraland, Sandbox, among others.

Ethereum-focused Polygon has also made headlines recently for partnering with non-crypto-native companies like Instagram, Stripe, Disney, Starbucks and Robinhood to integrate web3 technology into businesses.

“The integration will allow us to onboard more global brands and new users into the NFT marketplace, while continuing to bring web3 games to the masses,” Yin said. “Polygon has already brought many recognized brands into web3, which opens the gate for new users to discover the many utilities of NFTs.”

Polygon network supports over 37,000 decentralized applications (dApps) and has had about 1.8 billion total transactions processed, according to its website. The expansion with Polygon could provide Magic Eden with the ability to tap into its ecosystem and vice versa.

After launching in September 2021, Magic Eden grew in popularity fairly quickly. On average, it has about 10 million unique user sessions per month and sees over 20,000 NFTs traded daily — even amid a market downturn, the company stated. In June, Magic Eden raised $130 million, bringing its valuation to $1.6 billion.

To date, Magic Eden’s platform has over $2.5 billion in total NFT trade volume.

In general, the NFT market hasn’t been growing lately, as total NFT sales have declined every month consecutively since April, according to CryptoSlam data. However, in the past 30 days, Ethereum NFT sales volume increased about 26%, while Solana NFT sales volume fell almost 20%, the data showed. During that time period, Polygon outperformed both Ethereum and Solana blockchains with a 71% increase in NFT sales volume.

“Our entry into Polygon will include a launchpad and marketplace, both of which will go live next month and simplify the process for NFT creators and collectors,” Yin said.

Crypto launchpads are also known as crypto incubators and are platforms that allow web3-focused projects to build within a designated blockchain network. In Magic Eden’s case, its NFT marketplace launchpad is a cross-chain on Solana, Ethereum or both and is responsible for 90% of all Solana-based NFT volume, according to its website.

The integration will focus on providing tools to creators including a launchpad and marketplace that is linked to Polygon’s native token, MATIC, according to a statement. Gaming developers like BORA backed by Kakao Games, IntellaX, nWay, Block Games, Boomland, Planet Mojo and Taunt Battleworld have already committed to Magic Eden’s Launchpad with Polygon.

Long term, the partnership between Magic Eden and Polygon aims to bring more gaming developers and NFT games to market, Yin said.

So far, Magic Eden has brought over 100 games to market across the layer-1 blockchains Solana and Ethereum, he added. “Although we’re still in the beginning stages of mass adoption for blockchain games, we believe that Magic Eden can add value here.”

NFT marketplace Magic Eden integrates with Polygon to grow blockchain gaming by Jacquelyn Melinek originally published on TechCrunch

Carv valued at $40M as investors race to back web3 identity builders

Published November 22, 2022

Decentralized identity startups are having a moment as investors seek the next generation of killer applications in web3, even in times of market volatility. Blockchain-based identity systems, they argue, are the portal to user-facing applications in the decentralized land, whether the piece of identity is used to send tokens or showcase a gamer’s achievement.

Entrepreneurs have come up with an array of solutions for decentralized identity or DID. We’ve covered Magic, a San Francisco-based startup that wants to make access to DID as simple as logging into Slack and Medium. Spruce, another DID provider, offers a “sign-in with Ethereum” feature that can be interoperable with web2 identity systems. Then there’s Singapore-based .bit, which was founded by two Tencent veterans to use domain names for DID.

Los Angeles-based Carv is the latest contender in the space to have attracted investor attention. The company recently raised $4 million, valuing it at a handsome $40 million, it tells TechCrunch. The round was led by Vertex, an early-stage focused VC firm under the Singaporean sovereign wealth fund Temasek.

Carv is taking a different approach from other all-encompassing DID solutions by zeroing in on the gaming industry first. Its main products include an engine that aggregates gamer data from both web2 and web3 and corrals that information under unique user IDs. On the enterprise front, Carv provides white-label data service to game operators which can then query cross-platform data about new users, such as their reputation and achievements on established ecosystems like Steam.

“When you onboard a web2 user, lowering the barrier is very important. If you log in with Metamask, which is like a safe for your private key, and you want to log in from another laptop, then you have to memorize all those secret phrases,” says Victor Yu, co-founder at Carv. “So giving yourself an ID in a way that’s more user-friendly, I think it’s essentially very crucial.”

Carv starts with games because it’s where much of the consumer-facing development in web3 is happening, Yu reckons, but the startup eventually wants to expand to other user scenarios when they are more mature.

“Essentially in the market, we’re talking about to-consumer-driven use cases. Many of [the current decentralized apps] probably have only hundreds of daily users, so it’s hard to promote why users need DID,” Yu says.

Six months after launching its beta version, Carv has partnered with over 90 games and exceeded 300,000 registered users. Around 160,000 of them are active monthly, spending an average of nine minutes on the platform each session. The DID system is compatible with more than 20 Layer 1 networks including Ethereum and Solana, which Yu says will allow Carv to cover 95% of the blockchain games on the market.

“There are currently 300 to 400 blockchain games that have a significant number of users and with that, we already cover more than 70,” Yu explains.

Carv is already generating revenues from its white-label data service. It also takes a cut from NFT sales launched by games on its platform. In the future, the identity builder plans to enable customized user experiences such as tipping others for their comments, and it will charge a fee for such microtransactions.

The company’s seed round was backed by a long list of participating investors — typical for web3 deals where startups try to forge partnerships with ecosystem players. They included EVOS (ATTN Group), SNACKCLUB (Loud Gaming), Infinity Ventures Crypto, YGG SEA, UpHonest Capital, Lyrik Ventures, Lintentry Foundation, PAKADAO, 7UpDAO, and angel investor Aliaksandr Hadzilin, co-founder of NEAR.

Tencent veterans secure $13M to build cross-chain decentralized identities

Carv valued at $40M as investors race to back web3 identity builders by Rita Liao originally published on TechCrunch

Yahaha raises $40M more for its user-generated, low-code immersive gaming platform

Published November 15, 2022

Yahaha, a Helsinki- and Shanghai-based immersive, user-generated, low-code gaming platform founded by a group of Chinese gaming vets, made a splash in January when it announced a cumulative $50 million in funding ahead of its alpha launch in April. Now, with 100,000 creators and hundreds of thousands of players, it’s raised a further $40 million to continue building out its product — specifically to bring in monetization features and more social hooks — as well as to hire more talent and for business development.

Yahaha is describing this as an extension to its previous round, specifically a “Series A+.” We are asking for an updated valuation, but for some context, when it announced funding 11 months ago, I was told that the valuation was a “few hundred million” (so in the wide range of $300-500 million). The raise and valuation both stand out against a backdrop of slim fundraising, especially for consumer startups.

Yahaha styles itself as a dual-headquartered company, but its investors in this latest raise are all out of China and greater Asia.

Singapore’s Temasek and Chinese internet giant Alibaba are co-leading this investment, with another Chinese company, 37 Interactive Entertainment, also participating. Previously the company had raised funding from 5Y Capital, HillHouse, Coatue, ZhenFund, Bertelsmann Asia Investments, BiliBili and Xiaomi.

The company said it now has more than 150 employees, with offices in Helsinki, Seoul and Shanghai. LinkedIn, which shut down operations in China last year, notes that about half of the company’s employees registered on its platform identify as based out of Shanghai.

“Metaverse” as a concept has seen a lot of hype, especially earlier this year — spearheaded in no small part by one of the biggest consumer internet businesses of our time, Facebook, rebranding itself as “Meta” and going all-in on the concept.

A lot of that has not come to much so far, one big bellwether being Meta itself knocking back an own-goal in its own efforts.

However, most universally agree that gaming has been one of the few highlights, with gamers willing to pay for and use hardware and software to improve the immersive-ness of their experiences.

Yahaha is tapping into that opportunity and coupling it with another couple of big trends.

User-generated content has long been a popular aspect of gaming and entertainment overall, but more recently it’s taken on a more sophisticated, businesslike aspect: people who in the past might have created media for fun have now become “creators” who see business opportunities in building content and using it to connect with audiences. Not all of those creators — not many of them at all, in fact — are “technical”, so that is leading to attention (and funding) for companies that are building platforms to help creators create and spin up their business opportunities without a lot of heavy technical lifting.

And that’s where Yahaha comes in. The company’s founders — Chris Zhu (CEO), Pengfei Zhang (COO) and Hao Min (CTO) — all worked together as engineers at cross-platform gaming engine Unity — indeed Yahaha has been described to me as being built in partnership with Unity — and their low-code platform aims to do all that heavy lifting behind the scenes.

With an eye to creators and the businesses they are building, the new features the product will be getting will include more “monetization modules” and other commercial developments, said Zhu.

“We’ve seen fantastic growth in YAHAHA throughout the Early Alpha stage, and with over 100,000 creators signing up to make content with us, we are building on a strong foundation,” Zhu said in a statement. “This round of funding signifies the next step we are taking with YAHAHA, opening up more creator experiences monetization modules. We are also continuing to pioneer by investing in key areas of the community and by building relationships with brands that share our values, aligning ourselves with experts in the fields of game development, 3D asset creation and more. With YAHAHA, we’re not just ushering in the next generation of entertainment, we’re supporting the next generation of creators and giving them the tools and the integrated virtual world platform they need to make great content. There is a litany of opportunities that await us in the virtual world, and we want to be on the cutting edge of it with YAHAHA. To do this, it’s imperative we continue investing in our team and in the community that got us to where we are right now.”

The big questions will be whether those noodling around in the early version will stay with Yahaha as monetization comes in, whether that monetization works, whether games are entertaining enough to get players to engage and, of course, whether metaverse establishes itself as a permanent fixture in the market, rather than a passing stage, as gamers progress to the next level.

Yahaha raises $40M more for its user-generated, low-code immersive gaming platform by Ingrid Lunden originally published on TechCrunch