Mobile-Game Maker Scopely Raises $55 Million
Scopely, the L.A.-based mobile games developer and network whose titles include “The Walking Dead: Road to Survival,” has closed $55 million in Series B financing.
The funding, which brings Scopely to about $98.5 million raised to date, was led by Greycroft Growth Fund. “Companies are looking at mobile with the recent success of ‘Pokemon Go,’ and realizing the size of the commercial opportunity,” Scopely co-founder and CEO Walter Driver said.
Other investors participating in the round are: video-game publisher Take-Two Interactive; Elephant Partners, a new fund formed by Warby Parker co-founder Andy Hunt and former Highland Capital partner Jeremiah Daly; Evolution Media Partners, a partnership of CAA-backed Evolution Media Capital, TPG Growth and Participant Media; Highland Capital; and Sands Capital Ventures.
The large Series B round “gives us unlimited runway and strategic flexibility,” Driver said. “It gives us the opportunity to be more strategic, and build relationships with capital efficiency.”
Scopely said it will continue to invest in its two top-grossing games released in 2015, “The Walking Dead: Road to Survival,” developed with “Walking Dead” creator Robert Kirkman and his company Skybound Entertainment, and “Yahtzee With Buddies,” developed with Hasbro. “Walking Dead: Road to Survival” has been installed by more than 20 million players to date. Among other games, Scopely also developed “WWE Champions,” a free-to-play mobile puzzle and role-playing game featuring WWE stars.
Driver said Scopely is looking to help Hollywood studios and other entertainment companies leverage intellectual property for mobile games “but not in a disposable way… We want a multiyear experience with our brands, rather than days or weeks.”
With the funding, Greycroft partner Mark Terbeek and Scopely president and COO Javier Ferreira (formerly Disney Interactive senior VP of worldwide publishing) will join the company’s board.
Driver declined to reveal details of Scopley’s financials, but he claimed the privately held firm is now profitable and has grown revenue sixfold in North America over the last two years. Scopely has about 200 employees at its Culver City, Calif., headquarters, with about 500 total across its studio ecosystem worldwide.
“Scopely brings the technology, talent and monetization infrastructure necessary to launch products into massive global business that grow over time,” said Greycroft’s Terbeek in a statement. “We’ve been tracking the company closely for years since our initial seed investment and have been incredibly impressed with the executive team’s ability to realize their vision and create more believers every step of the way.”
The company was founded in 2011 by Driver, a social gaming entrepreneur, along with former Applied Semantics co-founder Eytan Elbaz; Ankur Bulsara, former lead software developer on MySpace’s developer platform, Ankur Bulsara; and startup veteran Eric Futoran.
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