Social gaming platform Piepacker has secured additional funding led by LEGO Ventures with support from Makers Funds and V13 Invest (FDJ x Serena).
Today Piepacker, the fast-growing social gaming platform, announces a $12 million Series A investment led by LEGO Ventures. The funding round is also supported by long-term investors, Makers Fund and V13 Invest (FDJ x Serena), along with several other entities. Adding to its seed round, the Series A investment brings Piepacker’s total funds raised to $15 million in one year.
The new funding will be pivotal in supporting Piepacker’s growth, allowing more focus on its core social experience alongside an expansion of the platform to more devices and territories. In addition to an increasing number of new modern and classic retro games in its free catalogue, the platform is also committed to introducing board games, card games and party games to its growing community. The company’s ambitions have continued to grow beyond retro games, to become the most accessible go-to platform for online social gaming, with plans to experiment with new content genres and interactive experiences.
“We created Piepacker to offer a social and low tech-friendly cloud gaming platform,” says CEO Benjamin Devienne. “We designed it to be accessible to everyone: available directly from a web browser, it does not require a high-speed internet connection to provide a seamless multiplayer game experience. Piepacker is all about bringing people together through games, with a touch of childhood playfulness and creativity. It was a natural step to choose LEGO Ventures as a catalyst and key advisor for our growth model. LEGO’s DNA and philosophy resonate perfectly with our vision.”
Launched in March 2020, Piepacker beta is now getting close to half a million unique users worldwide, all enjoying a growing catalogue of 80+ licensed games, stemming from long-term partnerships with industry-renowned game publishers, such as Codemasters, Interplay, Team17, and Data East.
With a “low-tech approach” to gaming, Piepacker is currently supported on Google Chrome, the world’s most used browser, making the platform accessible to more users and resonating with the business’s ethos to remove all hardware barriers and be as accessible as possible.
“At LEGO Ventures we invest in the future of education and digital play, exploring the LEGO idea of Learning through Play. This is very much in tune with the vision of Piepacker and its future ambitions,” says Rob Lowe, Managing Director of Digital Play, LEGO Ventures. “We’re delighted to be working with the hugely talented Piepacker team, and are particularly impressed with how they are building meaningful, social, frictionless play between all types of people – enabling limitless fun!”
“Since our initial investment, Piepacker has validated their core vision of an accessible, frictionless, and high-quality social gaming platform by successfully launching in beta and building an active community of fans,” says Archie Stonehill, Investor at Makers Fund. “As they move into a growth phase and broaden their audience, Piepacker is constantly expanding its offering with new content, empowering its community to shape the platform by embracing their feedback, and innovating with new features like Twitch integrations and on-platform creation tools.”
“FDJ is proud to renew its support to the development of Piepacker by taking part in its series A funding round through our V13 Invest fund managed by Serena,” says Marine Egnell, Head of Corporate Venture at FDJ. “Through this, FDJ will continue to explore the new trends of entertainment in an effort to achieve a deeper understanding of multiplayer, competitive and social experiences.”
13:Origin Kickstarter Raises $15k on Kickstarter
