Former developers of League of Legends, Halo, Overwatch and Dota 2 have founded a studio that will create multiplatform PvP titles. They have already raised $37.5 million, including from the Chinese giant NetEase.
The new studio was named Theorycraft Games. The studio was headed by Joe Tung, who previously served as vice president for League of Legends at Riot Games. Prior to Riot, he worked as an executive producer at Bungie, where he oversaw Destiny and Halo.
Five more people joined Tung:
- Areb Pirani is the former head of the League of Legends finance department at Riot Games;
- Joshua Morrison is a senior Bungie artist who has worked on Destiny 2 and some yet-to-be-announced IP;
- Michael Evans has worked at Bungie, Blizzard and Riot Games. He was the technical producer of Valorant, Overwatch and the first two parts of Halo;
- Mike Tipul is one of the creators of The Saboteur, Halo: Reach and Destiny and the second part of Full Spectrum Warrior;
- Moby Francke is a former art director of League of Legends and Valorant, who also contributed to Team Fortress 2, Half-life 2, Dota 2 and the Left for Dead series.
The developers have not yet shared all the details of their first project. However, in an interview for Venturebeat, they said that they would focus on developing a large-scale competitive online game for all platforms. They plan to create an active gaming community around it.
We want to make deep games for 10 thousand hours, which are best played with friends. These games will force players to build whole theories about which strategies work better and which ones work worse.
CEO of Theorycraft Games
The studio has already received investments in the amount of $37.5 million, which will be used, among other things, to hire new employees. The round was led by China’s NetEase, and other investors included venture funds NEA, Bitkraft Ventures, Griffin Gaming Partners and Sisu Game Ventures, as well as a small group of “business angels”.