Western companies are actively investing in the Finnish game studio Grand Cru, which has not yet managed to release a single project. Yesterday it became known about the next round of financing.
For the first time, Grand Cru was talked about exactly two years ago – in July 2011, when the former head of RealNetworks development, Markus Pasula, announced the launch of his own gaming startup. The task was set as follows: to develop a project in which users play with their friends, and not “milk” them in farms.
The first specific information about the game appeared at the beginning of last year. As it turned out, the project is called The Supernauts and conceptually it is very close to Minecraft: the user controls a superhero who can build various structures from conditional cubes.
There are three cardinal differences, as far as can be understood from the available information: the appearance of a social component (you can share built locations, build them together), bright positive graphics and the presence of a single with a full-fledged story.
The project impressed Idinvest Partners, Qualcomm Ventures and Nokia Growth Partners so much that they invested $11 million in the company.
And this is not the first investment in Grand Cru. In 2012, the studio received $2 million from the same Idinvest, the founder of Playdom, Rick Thompson, one of the former directors of Google, Anil Hansjee, also the former head of Wooga, Henric Suuronen, and the founder of Betclic, Nicolas Beraud. In total, $16 million was invested in it.
Grand Cru employs 25 people. The release of The Supernauts on iOS is promised “very soon”.