Rogue Games, a small American publisher of mobile games, received $1.25 million from Grishin Robotics as part of a seed funding round. Last launched Dmitry Grishin, Chairman of the Board of Directors and Co-founder Mail.ru Group.
This is an uncharacteristic investment for the fund. Grishin Robotics specializes in technology and services for a wide market. Previously, he invested in security systems, routers, scooters, educational startups and drones.
The non-standard deal for the company is partly explained by Grishin’s comment, in which he hopes that the joint work of the foundation with the technical background and the gaming team will allow us to launch innovative games.
One of the key trends in the gaming market is the combination of the digital and real worlds with the help of augmented and virtual reality technologies. I am sure that our experience of working with leading teams in the field of AR, VR and robotics, combined with the gaming expertise and many years of experience of the founders of Rogue Games, will be an important help for the development and publication of innovative mobile games.
Founder of Grishin Robotics, Co-founder Mail.Ru Group
It is not reported what exactly the money will be used for. Rogue Games only noted that the money received would help it become one of the largest publishers in the West.
It’s going to be a long way. Now Rogue Games is far from being considered a large and successful mobile company.
Rogue Games positions itself as a publisher, “helping in qualitative analysis, market research, building processes within the company and digital distribution.”
At the same time, since the launch in 2017, the company has not had any major commercial hits, whose monetization is based on micropayments. Her most successful projects are a clone of Clash Royale under the name Chaos Battle League (monthly earnings from the latter’s IAP, according to DataMagic, did not reach $ 20 thousand in February) and the Oz: Broken Kingdom card battler, which performed very well at the start, but now also earns less than $ 20 thousand per month.
On the other hand, the studio may be making good money from advertising. Rogue Games consistently releases several game projects per month, some of which can be called hyper-casual.
The strongest side of the team today is communication and bizdev: Strategic Director of Rogue Games Matt Casamassina worked as an App Store editor for 8 years, and the studio’s CEO is Mike DeLaet, former director of business development at Kabam and Glu.
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