Popularium secures $2m seed funding for next game by Magic: The Gathering creator Richard Garfield
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Games startup Popularium has closed its seed round of funding to the tune of $2 million.
The studio was founded by Magic: The Gathering creator Richard Garfield, former Hearthstone and World of Warcraft developer Jon Bankard and ex-Xbox Live manager Arka Ray.
Popularium is currently working on its debut title Chaos Agents, which it describes as an 'autobattler royale,' combining the 'last person standing' rules with the auto-battling gameplay concept of titles such as Dota Auto-Chess and Vampire Survivors.
"The funding will help us develop, market and launch the Chaos Agents public alpha in the summer," Ray told GamesIndustry.biz. "So far, we have been building with a core team of game developers, this funding will help us expand the team to bring in more support for managing our growing community.
"It will also help support development efforts for the key remaining features that the community is asking for before the Alpha launch, and help launch the first pre-release competitive tournaments for Chaos Agents."
Chaos Agents sees players train up their own superhero and pit its against dozens of other players' characters in a battle royale. Each chaos agent is completely unique to their player. The game is targeting a 2025 release.
Investors in the seed funding round include Palm Drive Capital, The Data Economics Company (a previous employer of Ray), Eden Chen via the A16Z Scout Fund, Reverb Ventures and Dave Nemetz, Pareto, Exit Capital, The Society of Entertainment, Bustle Digital Group's Bryan Goldberg, Gearbox's Dan Black, ex-NFL footballer Dhani Jones, and Ori and the Blind Forest executive producer Avi Ben-Menahem.
"Nearly 50% of the $2 million seed round financing for Popularium has come investors who grew up playing Magic and other games from Popularium's founders," Ray tells us. "Investors have reached out over social media, LinkedIn to express support for Popularium and Richard.
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