Andreessen Horowitz debuts $600 million fund for games investments

techcrunch.com:

Andreessen Horowitz is launching a new vertical fund exclusively focused on opportunities in the games industry.

The new $600 million fund brings a pool of dedicated capital and a new internal structure dedicated to sourcing deals inside the games vertical. The new vehicle, called Games Fund One, joins other industry-specific arms at a16z, including its crypto and bio divisions.

The fund is led by general partners Andrew Chen, Jon Lai and James Gwertzman.

“With [Games Fund One], we will continue to add more functions and develop deeper networks that are tailored to the games ecosystem so we can help our portfolio companies with everything from building digital communities, to managing their virtual economies, to IP licensing best practices, to helping build their development teams,” a blog post announcing the fund’s formation reads.

The fund’s backers include a number of executives in the games world, including co-founders at such companies as King, Discord, Roblox, Zynga, Twitch, Blizzard and Riot Games.

Andreessen Horowitz has already placed a number of bets in the world of gaming and MMOs, including Zynga and Oculus. The formation of the games vertical comes as another one of its bets, Facebook (now Meta), postures loudly about the opportunities in gaming when it comes to the metaverse.

The new fund arrives at a moment of retraction for the broader tech industry as investors encourage startups to hunker down and preserve cash while public tech stocks continue to get hammered. Gaming infrastructure company Unity is trading more than 80% below its November 2021 highs while games platform Roblox is trading some 75% below the highs reached during the same period.