Announcing our $52.5M Series C and What is Next for the In-Game Creator Economy
We started Overwolf in 2010 with the goal of building apps for the games we played. As a creator myself, I understood the difficulties third-party developers have around building apps for games, that opportunities are endless, and that we clearly can’t build everything ourselves. While our first vision was to build a swiss-army knife type software, with all the features we were missing while playing games (bad idea!), we realized we were onto something bigger. We’ve pivoted to build an open framework enabling hundreds of thousands of other creators to realize their visions, make gaming better, and ultimately create a brand new career category: the in-game creator.
The History of In-Game Creators
Creators have been creating and enhancing core game experiences for decades through in-game apps, websites, and mods. Even the creation of one of the most iconic fan-favorite games, League of Legends was a community-created mod for Blizzard Entertainment’s Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos.
Building products around games can be hard, and in the past it has not been financially rewarding. It’s no secret that creators with outstanding skills struggle to secure a decent income from their incredible projects and, as a result, are often left to pursue side gigs. It’s not just minor projects that can’t raise funds — even mods and game apps that are used by millions of users struggle. This critical mass of users is usually more than enough to sustain solid monetization channels, yet independent creators face difficulties leveraging their user base effectively, due to a lack of resources and marketing support. While it’s great to encourage creation out of passion and for recognition, one can only imagine how much more creation will happen when a sustainable way for creators to earn exists.
The In-Game Creator
At Overwolf, we are the guild for “in-game creators,” a term we coined to categorize this new generation of in-game app creators and mod authors who are developing truly awesome creations for gamers. We’ve covered a lot of ground in the last few years in our efforts to support in-game creators and build a framework that allowed them to distribute and monetize their creations.
In 2020, as part of our commitment to empower in-game creators, Overwolf acquired CurseForge from Twitch. CurseForge and Overwolf combined have supported creator communities for over 15 years with a platform that includes now over 30,000 creators, 90,000 mods and add-ons, and over 18 million monthly active users. Since the acquisition, Overwolf has collaborated with top mod authors and gaming communities to identify how to improve CurseForge. Every single decision we make with our CurseForge roadmap and its deployment is driven by creating the best experiences for the creator community.
With the help of Overwolf, many creators have finally been able to make an income from their creations. While we still have a long way to go on the modding front, I’m proud to say that in 2020 we paid out $10 million to in-game creators, with top creators bringing in more than $100,000 a month. While the numbers are impressive, I remind myself everyday that behind every number is a creator who deserves to be recognized for his or her contributions to the industry.
Supporting creators’ success is at the center of everything we do. In 2018, we teamed up with Intel to offer a $7M developers fund to empower in-game creators to build their dream apps on the Overwolf platform. Since we kicked off, Overwolf has invested $3M out of the $7M and been able to support those like Amit Tsur who was a lone-wolf developer that single-handedly created the app DotaPlus, one of Overwolf’s most popular DOTA 2 apps with over half a million downloads. The Fund allowed him to quit his dev position at a tech company and to make a career out of his passion.
Overwolf’s Series C Round
We’ve set the stage for the industry to see a new generation of user-generated content and I’m excited to announce we’ve raised $52.5M in a Series C financing round led by amazing investors who share our belief that the future growth of gaming lies largely in the hands of in-game creators. Griffin Gaming Partners and Insight Partners co-led the round with participation from investors including Ubisoft, Warner Music Group, Meg Whitman, Gen.G Co-Founder, Kevin Chou, and existing investors Marker, Intel Capital, Liberty Technology Venture Capital, and Atreides Management. A couple of other AAA game developers are also participating. I’m excited to team up with such wonderful investors, and learn from their insights and experience as we build in-game creation into a new profession in the world. With this investment we will be able to increase the manpower needed to create services for in-game creators, which is our key focus.
On the personal level, this fundraising experience was somewhat therapeutic for me. In the past, I struggled to get investors to understand the sheer size of user-generated content (UGC) and the massive value it could bring in terms of engagement and monetization in gaming. Although I found it challenging to raise money in the past, this time was different. Over the past two years, our team has done such a terrific job on all fronts — tech, communication, product, growth, support, HR, monetization, business development and even our funding deck, so all that was left for me to do was take meetings, answer questions and follow up with materials. I felt like a volleyball player getting the perfect pass, so all I had to do was jump and hit the ball hard. I did just that, and we signed a term sheet within four weeks.
It makes me proud and motivated to have these investors join our journey, but most of all I’m excited for everyone who uses Overwolf for building and sharing apps and mods. I know that these in-game creators will end up getting a product and a service they will love even more, built by a company backed by people who care about the future of gaming and the creators that are pioneering its growth through UGC.
What’s Next for Overwolf
We’ve come a long way since those early days as a bunch of young, overzealous computer science grads trying to make a meaningful product that would bring value to gamers like ourselves. In the past ten years, while we’ve focused on supporting and recognizing creators, we’ve also recognized the massive benefits UGC brings to the gaming ecosystem.
Our framework is more important today than we even imagined, with more people turning to user-generated content to enhance the gaming experience. Overwolf has also experienced 300% growth each year in the last two years as the market for content around games rises.
Overwolf believes in a future in which the community can participate with the game developer in creating new, moderated and safe game experiences. In our eyes, the more content and customizability a game has, the more likely a gamer will keep experiencing its content and by that extending the longevity of the game and generating more value for game developers and publishers in the long run. That’s why we are introducing CurseForge Core, a User Generated Content (UGC) as a service platform for game developers. CurseForge Core provides an SDK for game developers that integrates into the game itself and functions as a gateway for users to discover and install mods in-game, across all platforms and storefronts. By offering CurseForge Core, we are accelerating the community-created content movement by enabling publishers to easily integrate mods safely and seamlessly into their existing and new games. This benefits game developers, as game development costs continue to rise, adding community-created elements can be instrumental to increasing engagement and retention. You can check out the new service for yourself here.
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank each and every one of our creators, partners, investors and team members. Thank you for allowing us to be a part of your journey. It takes a world-class team, talented creators, and trusted partners to be able to do what we are doing — creating a world that brings sustainability to in-game creators and places UGC at the forefront. With the backing of the most notable investors in the space, we are confident that the Overwolf platform will lay the groundwork for a new era of game creation that will benefit the entire gaming community.
