Your Gaming and Esports Update

Taylor Hurst
Konvoy Ventures
Published in
7 min readDec 19, 2019

Deals

Edgegap Closes $1M Seed Round

Gaming infrastructure company Edgegap has announced the closing of a $1 million seed financing round to reduce lag in multiplayer video games. The funding round was led by Konvoy Ventures (!), with participation from Hiro Capital. In the future, edge compute nodes could be as small as a closet room in an office building or a shoebox-sized container sitting on a streetlamp. There are multiple use case applications for edge computing such as AR/VR, autonomous vehicles, facial recognition, and rich content management. One of the most interesting applications, due to its fast internet connectivity requirements, is multiplayer online gaming.

This is where Edgegap comes in. Lag is an extremely common and disruptive issue in online multiplayer games due to the current internet infrastructure’s inability to meet connectivity demands. We’ve previously invested in Haste to combat this same frustration in the market from an end-consumer perspective. Edgegap takes a new approach in targeting this pain point by attempting to leverage edge computing to host game servers physically closer to the players in a given match.

Facebook Acquires PlayGiga

Facebook has acquired the Spanish cloud gaming company PlayGiga, which previously offered its services across Italy, Argentina, Chile, and Spain. The purchase was confirmed by Facebook to CNBC, following reports last week from Cinco Dias which claimed that the deal was imminent and was valued at €70 million (around $78 million). In a tweet confirming the news, Facebook Gaming’s official twitter account said “We’re thrilled to welcome @PlayGigaOficial to the Facebook Gaming team. We’ll decline further comment for now.” A message on PlayGiga’s website says that the team is “moving on to something new” but confirmed that it would be continuing its work on cloud gaming.

Game.TV Closes $25M

Game.tv has closed a round of funding to the tune of $25 million. The company operates Tourney, an AI-powered esports tournament platform that can be integrated into online communities (on Discord, for example) and run weekly tournaments based around when most players are online. Steamers and content creators are also able to use it to run tournaments directly within their community. The funding round was led by Intel Capital, with managing director Arun Chetty saying Game.tv gained the investor’s attention after its platform “cross 10,000 tournaments in a short period of time.”

Studio Mutiny Wins Tranzfuser

A team from Falmouth University won £25,000 to develop a video game about a Celtic warrior that fights to protect the forest. Members of Studio Mutiny began creating their game Sai while studying in their third year at the university’s Games Academy. This week they won Tranzfuser, a competition designed to seek out and support the next generation of game development talent. Dr. Doug Brown, director of the university’s Games Academy said, “The whole Games Academy is delighted for this team of graduates. Studio Mutiny can now not only continue development on their promising and polished title with this funding but also leverage the prestige this announcement has generated to bid for further funding from publishers and investors.”

Updates

Elo Entertainment and ESL Launch Reach Platform

Data analytics company Elo Entertainment has partnered with event organizer ESL to launch Dota 2 tournament platform Reach. Using data analytics and behavior-scoring to assist in player development, Reach aims to provide a path for Dota 2 players to reach a professional level of play. Sabina Hemmi, CEO and Co-founder of Elo Entertainment discussed the venture in a release: “We are proud to create a path for players of all skill sets to improve their level of play and their chances of being recognized within Dota 2. We are building a community that is highly inclusive and promotes the highest standards of play.”

EA Announces Global Esports Series for Apex Legends

EA’s “Apex Legends” is getting an esports series, and the first competition will be held in January 2020. This was the perfect time to make this announcement after winning the best multiplayer title at The Game Awards last week, EA announced an open format tournament series for the battle royale game with four types of events, ranging from online tournaments to big-ticket global live events. Officially called the Apex Legends Global Series, the events will carry a total prize pool of $3 million. Unlike Activision Blizzard, EA will follow Epic Games in allowing anyone to participate.

“There are no guaranteed slots … anybody can participate,” said Todd Sitrin, vice president and general manager of EA’s competitive gaming division, contrasting the series to franchised leagues with professional players. Eligible players for Apex must live in one of 60 approved countries and meet minimum age and PC processing requirements.

Game Awards Saw 73% Viewership Growth in 2019

The Game Awards, now in its sixth year, has seen its viewership soar to new heights with each new show. Organizers for the event founded and hosted/produced by Geoff Keighley sent out viewership data for the recently aired 2019 show, and the numbers were vastly better than the 2018 show on just about every metric.

The 2019 broadcast reached more than 45.2 million global live streams, which was up 73% from 2018’s record of 26.2 million live streams. For reference, when The Game Awards started in 2014, the show had just 1.9 million live streams. The Game Awards this year saw a peak concurrency of over 7.5 million global viewers, including more than 2 million concurrent viewers across Twitch and YouTube.

In fact, the top 13 platforms that aired the show all saw double-digit increases in viewership compared to 2018. Twitch enjoyed 1.3 million concurrent viewers at its peak during the evening, while 4,700 individual creators from around the world co-streamed the program live (up from 3,300 creators in 2018). And some of these fans translated the show in real-time for fans.

New Game Releases For December (Credit: GameSpot)

  1. Halo Reach[Master Chief Collection] — December 3 (Xbox One, PC): Halo Reach has been conspicuously missing from the Master Chief Collection for years, but that will all change on December 3 when the title finally joins the anthology. Not only will Reach be added to the Xbox One version of MCC, it will also be the first MCC game to hit PC — although Microsoft is handling the PC release a little differently. Instead of dropping the entire Master Chief Collection on the platform at once, the publisher is instead releasing each title individually in the order in which they take place, starting with Reach. As for when the other Halo MCC games will arrive on PC, developer 343 Industries has only said they’ll be released “when they’re ready.”
  2. MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries— December 10(PC): It’s been a long time coming, but the beloved MechWarrior series is finally making a return with the release of MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries. First unveiled back in 2016, MechWarrior 5 was originally slated to launch in 2018 before suffering several delays, but it is now set to arrive on PC on December 10. Developed by Piranha Games, the studio behind MechWarrior Online, MechWarrior 5 maintains the series’ signature blend of tactical mech combat while offering up a standalone story that veterans and newcomers alike can dive into. The game also features co-op play, allowing you to join with up to three other players to wreak mech-based destruction.
  3. Wattam — December 17(PS4, PC): Another game that’s been a long time coming is Wattam, the quirky new project from Katamari Damacy creator Keita Takahashi. Originally announced back in 2014, Wattam is finally set to arrive on PS4 and PC via the Epic Games Store on December 17. Like Katamari, Wattam’s gameplay is physics-based, although instead of rolling an ever-increasing ball around, you’ll be guiding a lonely character named Mayor around, interacting with other characters by holding their hands, stacking them up, and engaging in other charmingly bizarre activities.

Twitter: @taylor_konvoy

Konvoy Ventures Twitter: @KonvoyVentures

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