Istanbul, Turkey-based Dream Games, a mobile gaming startup, on Monday, raised $50 million in a Series A round led by Index Ventures, with participation from existing investors Balderton Capital and Makers Fund.
The latest round brings Dream Games’ total capital of $57.5 million. Soner Aydemir, a veteran of Turkey’s first gaming unicorn, Peak, along with several team members from Peak, founded Dream Games in 2019.
The company aims to deploy the fresh funds in scaling up its first offering, Royal Match, which is being released globally across the US, Western Europe, Canada, Australia, and Japan.
Speaking of the development, Soner Aydemir, said,
“We’re building this as an entertainment company. What they did for animated movies, we want to do for mobile gaming. We are focusing on casual puzzle games first because everyone plays these, but we will also move forward with other genres. We want to be a huge interactive entertainment company that builds high-quality games.”
The company in a statement said that the eventual goal for Dream Games is to create additional titles, and the company will more than double its staff from 30 employees to around 75 by the end of the year.
Aydemir said that despite a boom in the gaming industry, which is aided by consumers spending more time at home during the pandemic, Dream games will be able to succeed even as vaccine drives provide optimism that restrictions will be eased.
Turkey’s gaming startups have been a bright spot in a local economy hit by outflows, attracting more than $2 billion in funding in the past five years from the likes of Tencent Holdings and Netmarble Corp. Zynga Inc. agreed to buy Peak for $1.8 billion this past June.
Index Ventures partner Stephane Kurgan, a former top executive at Candy Crush-maker King Digital Entertainment, touted early engagement and retention statistics for Royal Match, shared,
“Casual gaming has been growing very strongly. We think we have a shot here at building one of the great global champions.”
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