Pragma is a new BaaS platform for the development and support of game services. The startup raised an additional $12 million for its development. The founders of Pragma intend to create a universal solution that would help studios to operate complex cross-platform projects and not spend extra money on creating their own services.To date, the total amount of investments attracted by Pragma has amounted to $16.2 million, according to the VentureBeat portal.
The main investors in the new round were Zynga co-founder Mark Pincus, Oculus co-founder Nate Mitchell, David Thacker from the Greylock Partners venture fund, as well as Cloudera co-founder Amr Awadallah.
Before proceeding to the history of Pragma and its service, it is worth mentioning what is meant by backend-as-a-service (BaaS) in the case of game development. This is a set of tools that helps in operating game services: user accounts, social functions, player data collection, cross-platform support, lobby system, matchmaking, etc.
It is these tasks that Pragma intends to solve. Its founders are Eden Chen, an entrepreneur and former professional player in Warcraft 3, and Chris Cobb, a former lead engineer of Riot Games. Initially, they planned to develop their own game, but soon noticed that most studios lack a ready-made backend solution.
Many developers, with whom the founders of Pragma communicated, had to create their own BaaS systems. As a result, extra funds from the budget were spent on this. “Almost all studios replied that they did not want to develop such services themselves, because they are very expensive,” Chen notes.
Then they decided to create their own solution, which they started developing last year. Now Pragma offers developers a starter package. It includes support for cross-platform accounts, invite and matchmaking systems, server hosting, tracking of various metrics, as well as integration with Unreal and Unity.
Pragma also offers a corporate solution, which is in the closed beta stage. This is a full package of services: all the functions of the starter package, as well as big data collection, virtual private cloud, game statistics, inventory system and customization options for specific tasks.
Currently, only a few studios have access to the full set of Pragma functions. Among them is One More Game, founded by Patrick Wyatt. This is one of the first Blizzard employees who led the development Battle.net and was responsible for the multiplayer modes of StarCraft and Diablo. According to Chen, Wyatt knows the principles of creating and maintaining service platforms like no one else.
Currently, the Pragma team employs 13 people. In the future, they also plan to help developers integrate cryptocurrencies into the payment systems of their games.