Bunch 2.0 pivots to a social gaming metaverse

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Bunch has pivoted from a social layer for games to a more expansive metaverse that aims to keep players coming back for longer times and to engage in commerce and more activities.

Bunch will still do the basic functions of enabling players to play games with each other and stay connected as they jump from one game to another. In this way, Bunch is a kind of lightweight metaverse, one where you can now interact with people using animated avatars as opposed to only talking to people in video chat.

New York-based Bunch started with the video chat model in late 2017 as a real-time social network where people could gather to engage in multiplayer gaming experiences. Selcuk Atli and cofounders Jason Liang and Jordan Howlett wanted to re-create the fun they had playing games in-person at LAN parties, where a bunch of friends would congregate in one group and play a bunch of different games together.

Atli, CEO of Bunch, said in an interview with GamesBeat that the vision was to bring people together when they were physically apart, and that was very timely with the onset of the pandemic. During the lockdown, the audience grew from thousands to millions.

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And now that has evolved into connecting people in a metaverse, the universe of virtual worlds that are all interconnected, like in novels such as Snow Crash and Ready Player One. Bunch has more than 100,000 daily active users. The plan is to launch a beta test for Bunch 2.0 in the second quarter. That’s small compared to something like