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by cletus 5574 days ago
Wow, $42 million is a whopping huge Series A.

I'm actually surprised that Rovio is going this route. From what I read, it seems that game financing goes along a different route normally (taking the form more similar to a bond IIRC; anyone knowledgeable care to enlighten?).

Repeat success is any field like this is hard. There are only a handful of studios who have had sustained repeated success and that typically revolves around a successful franchise. For example:

- id Software (Quake/Doom);

- Epic Games (Unreal)

- Rockstar (Grand Theft Auto);

- Infinity Ward (Call of Duty).

One (admittedly huge) hit does not a franchise make, or at least not a proven franchise. It'll be interesting to see what Rovio does with this money, whether they try and (further) leverage the Angry Birds franchise and really what the future of mobile gaming is.

If you estimate that a Series A round will take a 25-40% stake in a company that puts a ballpark post-money valuation of $100-160 million, which is impressive.

1 comments

I think you should look at this financing more as creating the next Zynga, than the next "old school game studio". I bet they proved they can up sell "different but the same" games thanks to the Halloween specials of Angry Birds, and so on.