Company type | Private |
---|---|
Founded | 2010 |
Headquarters | Switzerland |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people | |
Products |
|
Number of employees | 2,000+ [1] (2019) |
Website | www |
FunPlus is a video game developer and publisher headquartered in Switzerland, with operations in China, Singapore and Spain. [2] The company has developed the following mobile games: State of Survival, Frost & Flame: King of Avalon, Guns of Glory: Lost Island, Stormshot: Isle of Adventure and Sea of Conquest: Pirate War. [3]
FunPlus was founded in 2010 by Andy Zhong and Yitao Guan in Silicon Valley as Halfquest, focusing on web game development in Silicon Valley and Beijing. [5] In Beijing, the company created DianDian Interactive game studio, which became the casual games division of the company. [6] In October 2010, the company launched its first web game, Family Farm, on German social network VZ. [7] In June 2011, the game appeared on Facebook.
In 2012, the company was relocated to Beijing and rebranded as FunPlus in 2012. [8] In the same year, FunPlus launched it first mobile game, Family Farm Seaside, as well as a second web game, Royal Story. [9]
A third web game, Happy Acres, launched in 2014. [10] In the same year, the company established a mobile strategy game studio, KingsGroup, in Beijing.
KingsGroup launched its first mobile strategy game, King of Avalon, in 2016. [11] In the same year, FunPlus sold its DianDian Interactive studio to the Century Group, a listed company on the Shenzhen stock exchange, for $1 billion, after which the game studio was renamed Century Game. After the sale of DianDian studio, FunPlus focused on investing in other game studios globally as well as developing strategy games, e-sports, live-streaming and game publishing platforms. [12] [13]
In 2017, KingsGroup launched its second mobile strategy game, Guns of Glory. [14] In 2018, FunPlus started to grow its international studio presence with a new casual studio in Beijing called Puzala, as well as a new mobile development studios in Shanghai. [15]
In 2019, KingsGroup launched and self-published mobile strategy game State of Survival. The game has since achieved more than 100 million downloads. [16] FunPlus continued its international growth with new studios and a publishing office in Barcelona. [17] [18]
In 2020, the company's Guangzhou studio was opened. In December 2020, FunPlus opened its corporate global headquarters in Switzerland. [19]
In 2021, FunPlus collaborated with AMC to introduce The Walking Dead to State of Survival. [20]
In April 2021, Imagendary Studios was acquired by FunPlus. [21] In December 2021, the company collaborated with DC to introduce the Joker to State of Survival. [22]
In January 2022, FunPlus launched the match-3 RPG Call of Antia. [23] In March 2022, FunPlus announced a partnership with Orlando Bloom to bring his character to mobile strategy title, King of Avalon. [24]
In January 2023, FunPlus expanded its publishing operations in Barcelona to game development, focused on hybrid-casual games . [25] In July 2023, FunPlus announced DC: Dark Legion a new strategy video game set in DC universe currently in development. [26] In August 2023, Imagendary Studios was "deeply restructured" and laid off a majority of its employees. Studio head Ryan Pollreisz and other lead staff members left the company in the weeks prior. [27] In October 2023, FunPlus announced a partnership with Capcom to bring Resident Evil characters to mobile strategy title, State of Survival. [28]
In January 2024, FunPlus launched the strategy game Sea of Conquest: Pirate War, giving players a triple-A gameplay experience on mobile. [29]
FunPlus has an esports division named FunPlus Esports that sponsors several esports teams and leagues around the world. In 2017, FunPlus Esports founded FunPlus Phoenix, a professional esports organization [30] with a League of Legends team competing in China's top league (the LPL), and operates the Pacific Championship Series. During its run from mid-2018 to 2019, the League of Legends SEA Tour was operated by FunPlus Esports. [31]
In 2018 FunPlus Esports, in partnership with Chinese online game developer NetEase, launched the world's first global battle royale pro league, "Rules of Survival Global Series". [32]
In 2019, FunPlus Phoenix won the League Of Legends World Championship in a 3-0 victory over G2 Esports. [33]
In August 2021, FunPlus Phoenix’s mid laner Doinb earned the League of Legends Pro League Most Valuable Player award for the 2021 summer split. [34]
In 2022, FunPlus Phoenix Wins the Chinese Wild Rift League. [35]
In 2012, FunPlus received funding in the amount of $13 million in the Series A round from several Silicon Valley investors. In the Series B the company’s total funding raised was $87 million. Among other ventures, the investment went to the development of the DianDian Interactive game studio. [36]
In 2014, FunPlus raised $74 million in a series B funding round led by Orchid Asia Group, GSR Ventures, and Steamboat Ventures. [37]
Since 2014, the company has invested in other game studios and game-related projects globally.
In 2016, the company started a $50 million fund to invest in game startups. [38] The first investment that FunPlus made was in Sirvo Studios. [39] [40]
In July 2016, FunPlus invested an undisclosed amount to Singaporean mobile game developer XII Braves. [41]
In June 2021, FunPlus became one of the investors in seed funding for Drop Fake, which raised $9 million. [42] In July 2021, FunPlus led a series B financing round for Singularity 6. The studio has raised $30 million. [43] In the same year, FunPlus participated in the seed funding round for Gardens Studio, in which it raised $4.5 million. [44]
In 2022, FunPlus invested in Conchship Games with a 25% stake. [45]
EA Mobile Inc. is an American video game development studio of the publisher Electronic Arts (EA) for mobile platforms.
Kongregate is an American web gaming portal and video game publisher. Its website features over 124,000 online games and 30+ mobile games available to the public. The company also publishes games for PC, mobile, and home consoles. It was purchased by GameStop Corporation in 2010 before being acquired by Modern Times Group MT AB in 2017.
Garena is a Singaporean game developer and publisher of free online games. It is the digital entertainment arm of parent company Sea Ltd, which formerly used Garena as the parent company name.
Riot Games, Inc. is an American video game developer, publisher, and esports tournament organizer based in Los Angeles, California. It was founded in September 2006 by Brandon Beck and Marc Merrill to develop League of Legends and went on to develop several spin-off games and the unrelated first-person shooter game Valorant. In 2011, Riot Games was acquired by Chinese conglomerate Tencent. Its publishing arm, Riot Forge, oversaw the production of League of Legends spin-offs by other developers until its shutdown in January 2024. The company worked with Fortiche to release Arcane, a television series based on the League of Legends universe.
Spil Games is a Dutch video game developer based in Hilversum. The company publishes free-to-play games for Android and iOS devices, as well as for the Facebook Platform.
Wooga is a German game software company based in Berlin that develops story-driven casual games for mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets and social networks like Facebook. It has developed mobile games such as June's Journey, Pearl's Peril and Switchcraft. The company is part of the social games company Playtika. Their name comes from the words "World of Gaming".
Kabam is a Canadian video game developer and publisher founded in 2006 and headquartered in Vancouver, with offices in Montreal, San Francisco, and Austin, Texas. The company develops and publishes massively multiplayer social games such as Marvel Contest of Champions and Transformers: Forged to Fight for mobile devices. Before expanding into gaming, Kabam established itself as a social applications developer with focusing on entertainment and sports.
Com2uS (Korean: 컴투스) is a South Korean mobile and online game development/publishing company established in 1998. Com2uS develops games for Android, iOS, and other platforms. The company's corporate offices are located in the United States, Korea, Japan, and China.
Video gaming in India is an emerging market since India is experiencing strong growth in online gaming, making it one of the top gaming markets in the world. Over the past few decades, the Indian gaming industry has gone from close to nonexistent in the 1990s to one of the top markets globally in the late 2010s. In 2019, the online gaming market in India was estimated at ₹6,200 crore (US$740 million) with an estimated 300 million gamers, a 41.6% increase from 2018. As of 2021, it is one of the top five mobile gaming markets in the world. By the third quarter of 2020 there were more than 7.4 billion mobile game downloads. According to the "State of India Gaming Report," released by venture capital firm Lumikai with Google, as of November 2023, there were 568 million gamers in India. Additionally, it was reported that in FY23, 41% of gamers were female and 66% were from non-metros, with each user on average spending 10–12 hours per week on video games.
Scopely, Inc. is an American interactive entertainment company and mobile-first video game developer and publisher. The company is headquartered in Culver City, California, with offices across the US, EMEA and Asia.
Skillz is an online mobile multiplayer video game competition platform that is integrated into a number of iOS and Android games. The Skillz platform helps developers create franchises by enabling social competition in their games. Skillz has over 14,000 game developers who launched a game integration on the platform. Skillz hosts billions of casual esports tournaments for millions of mobile players worldwide.
Plarium Global Ltd. is a video game developer, publisher and subsidiary of the Australian gambling machine manufacturer Aristocrat Leisure. It is known for creating mobile, desktop and browser games in various genres including MMO, RPG, action, strategy, and casual.
Krafton Inc. is a South Korean video game publisher and holding company based in Bundang-gu, Seongnam. It was created in November 2018 to serve as the parent company for Bluehole, founded by Chang Byung-gyu in Seoul in March 2007, and its subsidiaries. The company has published several notable video game titles including TERA, PUBG: Battlegrounds, New State Mobile,The Callisto Protocol and Moonbreaker. According to Forbes, Chang has a net worth of $2.9 billion and is one of the seven gaming billionaires in South Korea.
Playtika Holding Corp. is an Israeli digital entertainment company specializing in the development and publication of mobile games. In 2021, Playtika had over 35 million monthly active users.
Free Fire is a free-to-play battle royale game developed and published by Garena for Android and iOS. It was released on 8 December 2017. It became the most downloaded mobile game globally in 2019 and has over 1 billion downloads on Google Play Store. In the first quarter of 2021 it was the highest grossing mobile game in the US. In November 2019, it surpassed $1 billion in lifetime revenue. As of 2021, Free Fire had surpassed 150 million daily active users.
Shanghai Moonton Technology Co. Ltd., commonly known as Moonton, is a Chinese multinational video game developer and publisher owned by the Nuverse subsidiary of ByteDance and based in Shanghai, China. It is best known for the mobile multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game Mobile Legends: Bang Bang released in July 2016.
Tilting Point is a free-to-play (F2P) games publisher founded in 2012. In the years since, Tilting Point has grown to include over 200 staff members and office locations in New York, Boston, Barcelona, Kyiv, Seoul, and San Diego. Further partnerships with development studios and publishers exist in over a dozen countries.
Phoenix Labs is a Canadian video game developer based in Vancouver, British Columbia. The company was founded in April 2014 by former Riot Games developers Jesse Houston, Sean Bender, and Robin Mayne. The studio's first project, Dauntless, launched in open beta on Microsoft Windows in May 2018 and has been released on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on May 21, 2019 and released on Nintendo Switch on December 10.
Mobile Premier League (MPL) is an Indian online gaming platform. It is based in Bengaluru, India. Founded in 2018 by Srinivas Kiran and Shubham Malhotra, the company currently offers 60 games in categories such as fantasy sports, sports games, puzzle, casual and board games. MPL offers fantasy cricket, football, and basketball leagues and has partnerships with major sports leagues such as the NBA and Pro Kabaddi League.
Savvy Games Group is a Saudi multinational video game investment, development, publishing and Esports company based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Established in 2021, the company was founded by the Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund Public Investment Fund to foster the growth of the gaming industry in Saudi Arabia and to invest in foreign video game companies.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)