A bunch of social game startups get $ 20 million in Series A with support from major game studios

What is everyone in quarantine? It seems that you are playing a lot of games on your mobile phone.

And that meant the bunch boom era, Like a discord Video chat app for mobile games. The number of monthly active users has increased 50 times since March, exceeding 1 million. “I observe the behavior of gamers and hardcore gamers are really interested in games.” And there is another category we call “social gamers.” They are people who watch games as a way to spend quality time with friends. And I think that’s what we’re actually seeing. ”

Against this backdrop, Bunch has raised $ 20 million in Series A funding. The round was led by venture capital firm General Catalyst and invited many of the major gaming companies, including Electronic Arts.
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, Take-Two Intereactive and Krafton, Manufacturer PUBG.. It’s rare for top game studios to cooperate with such investments, and it’s a sign that these companies think they might integrate Bunch into their games.

“The entire gaming industry is lagging behind Bunch,” said Niko Bonatsos, managing director of General Catalyst, who coordinated funding. “We believe we need to develop the next generation of gaming infrastructure. YouTube, Twitchs around the world have been dating themselves, so whenever a new gaming infrastructure product comes out, I I am very interested. ”

While Twitch and YouTube are primarily console and desktop gamer domains, Bunch is dedicated to mobile games. Founded in 2017, Bunch relies heavily on in-house developed first-party games for now. Atli’s favorite Mars dash. “Mario Kart On Mars, “says Atli, who started the company with Jason Liang and Jordan Howlett. “You can freeze your friends and fly over them. It’s one of the games you’ll be flirting with your friends.” These games can be played within Bunch’s app, and Bunch can also be used for video chat while playing. Can be used Mine Craft, Roblox and PUBG, Among other games.

In March, we saw rapid growth. “Suddenly we Lots We were able to increase the number of users in one day. “We were like’what’s going on’,” Italy was initially a hotspot. “And the next day, many of them started coming from Spain.” Growth began one after another in Europe, and lockdown began.

Atli noticed a change in demographics as users poured into the app during the Covid-19 quarantine. The majority of teenage boys (14 to 15 years old) have changed to women in their 20s and 30s. 60% of Bunch users are currently women.

The $ 20 million fund is partly used to hire staff and pay more for more servers, a technology that we determined in March to be very short on Bunch. “Basically, we had to stop all future work for a month or two just to get the kitchen in order,” says Atli. It Raised before $ 3.8 million from Tencent, Riot Games, Supercell and other investors last November.

Bunch’s biggest dream is to be like Discord, a chat app that is also a social network. “Social networks for casual gamers haven’t been created yet,” says Bontasos. “For such a person, there is no real community.”