Paris – February, 27th 2024 - Today, PlayMakers announced that they have successfully closed a $1.5 million pre-seed fundraising round to expand their innovative suite of tools to power user-generated content in any games. The company is paving the way in redefining how games are built, by involving players in games’ co-creation.
The company was founded just one year ago by Ilan Nabeth, Maxime Niankouri, and Costantino Carrega. The team, which was part of the very first employees of Homa, the French mobile game publisher that raised over $150 million, has already achieved remarkable milestones with over 600 million game downloads collectively during their previous positions.
The pre-seed round attracted significant interest from leading investors, with web3 fund RockawayX serving as the primary backer. Notable business angels also joined the round, including Sébastien Borget, co-founder of Sandbox, V3ntures, the VC arm of the company organizing the Paris Blockchain Week, and Hugues Ouvard, former Managing Director at Xbox. The company has also been supported by the Tezos Foundation and Tezos adoption team from Nomadic Labs in its early days.
PlayMakers' mission is to turn video game players into creators. The company built a platform that lets game studios leverage the passion and skills of their players by allowing them to craft new game assets such as 3D characters, animations, music, and more. It is white-labelled, so it is tailored and implemented according to each game community's unique characteristics. Game developers can then implement the best player-made creations in one click in their game, to renew the gaming experience with new content, or monetize them to unlock new revenues. The community is encouraged to engage directly, elevating the creations they like best, and voting on their inclusion in the game. The best creators are incentivized financially for their work and build clout and reputation in the community.
Ilan Nabeth - Co-Founder and CEO at PlayMakers
“Thanks to web3 technology, core contributors can be rewarded fairly and transparently depending on the quality of their creations. Moreover, with the rise of generative AI, more and more players are turning into creators, and it becoming easier to create valuable content. We are at a crossroads in the gaming industry, where we can start involving players in the game conception, with a dedicated and powerful platform.”
As the gaming industry continues to evolve, user-generated content (UGC) has emerged as the next big frontier, and PlayMakers is positioned as one of the pioneering players in this space. Major actors in the industry heavily invested in user-generated content, such as Fortnite, which decided to dedicate 40% of their net profits to creators, or Krafton, the creatorsof Players Unknown Battleground which dedicated a $100 million fund for their creators four months ago.
Martin Kupka - from RockawayX
“We’re excited to see our thesis on UGC starting to play out. We are convinced that the upcoming wave of web3 games will focus on turningplayers into creators, and PlayMakers offers the perfect, easy-to-implement solution for developers to collect, curate, and integrate player creations. We already see strong demand from the market and are excited to continue supporting PlayMakers on their journey!”