Worldwidegames gets backing from two VCs in first round funding

07 Oct 2009 | News

Funding round completed

Start-up company worldwidegames GmbH has secured first-round funding from Neuhaus Partners in conjunction with the Connected Life and Work Fund managed by T-Venture, for the further development of playnik.com, a games portal that applies social networking principles to online gaming.

Playnik offers both proprietary browser games and games developed by its partners in the fast-growing, Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG) market. The investment of of the two venture capital funds follows seed financing from Holtzbrinck Ventures and High-Tech Gründerfonds.

Playnik.com has released a wide range of free MMOG games, including Desert Blitz, Mission Cobra and Castle Fight, that combine other social gaming features. After a single sign-on, users get access to all games on playnik.com. Each player’s statistics are included in the different games and shown to the community, allowing video gamers to compare themselves to other players, in not just one game but across games.

Harald Eisenächer, a Board member from Deutsche Telekom’s Products & Innovation segment, said, “In Germany, online games are among the offerings with the fastest-growing fan communities on the Internet. Thanks to its portfolio of outstanding games and interesting functions for gamers, playnik.com is extremely well positioned in this market.”

worldwidegames has built up a community of over one million users. “Browser games are the future,” Matthias Grychta from Neuhaus Partners predicts. In Europe and North America, $1.4 billion was spent on MMOG subscriptions in 2008, including premium subscriptions to games that can otherwise be played free of charge. This figure is expected to rise to $2 billion by 2013.

The Connected Life and Work Fund is managed by T-Venture, Deutsche Telekom’s venture capital company. The focus of its investments strategy is the Internet and the media.


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