TinyCo Launches $5 Million Fund To Finance Games From Third-Party Developers
TinyCo, the mobile gaming company Andreessen Horowitz backed in an $18 million round, is launching a $5 million fund to finance iOS and Android titles from third-party developers. Called the TinyFund, the program provides up to $500,000 per title along with marketing, development and business assistance.
On the one hand, it’s not uncommon for many of the larger developers to mix work produced in-house with games that are published on behalf of smaller studios. Glu Mobile regularly creates their own titles while publishing titles from other firms; it secured two deals earlier this quarter to work with author James Frey’s publishing company and Blammo Games, for example. Gamevil’s hit Air Penguin was originally developed by a six-person South Korean studio called Enterfly. This is just a way to mitigate the risks inherent to a hits-driven business.
Yet at the same time, from the perspective of the venture-backed social gaming world, this is more unusual as the largest companies like Zynga have cherry-picked their winners by buying small studios outright instead of merely financing their titles.
TinyCo recently launched two casual sim titles Tiny Nightclub and Tiny Zoo and two other major older titles, Tiny Chef and Tap Resort. It says it has seen more than 20 million downloads across its portfolio.
May 29th, 2011 at 8:01 am
[...] TinyCo Launches $5 Million Fund To Finance Games From Third-Party Developers [...]
June 29th, 2011 at 11:51 am
[...] million in external partners to build a strong lineup of smartphone gaming titles. This follows on TinyCo’s move to build out a $5 million fund, Glu Mobile’s $500,000 mobile-social gaming contest and we might throw in Tapjoy’s [...]
July 15th, 2011 at 3:54 pm
[...] also comes at a time when many mobile gaming companies like TinyCo, Glu Mobile and Gamevil have launched funds or contests to find promising IP from third-party [...]
July 15th, 2011 at 6:05 pm
We’re all in on html5 development http://joyplay.com/casinoparty
July 17th, 2011 at 8:36 am
[...] also comes at a time when many mobile gaming companies like TinyCo, Glu Mobile and Gamevil have launched funds or contests to find promising IP from third-party [...]
August 2nd, 2011 at 5:03 pm
[...] of acquisitions and partnerships. Other mid-size and smaller companies like Crowdstar and TinyCo have built funds where they finance titles from up-and-coming [...]
October 17th, 2011 at 6:32 pm
[...] Crowdstar also recently said it’s done six investments so far of around $250,000, while TinyCo has yet to announce any deals for its $5 million fund. [...]