INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Berlin-based games studio Klang, which is building a massive multiplayer online simulation called Seed utilizing Improbable virtual world
builder platform, has just bagged $8.95M in Series A funding to support development of the forthcoming title.
The funding is led by veteran
European VC firm Northzone.It followsa seed raise for Seed, finalized in March 2018, and led by Makers Fund, with participation by
firstminute capital, Neoteny, Mosaic Ventures, and Novator — bringing the total funding raised for the project to $13.95M.
The studio was
founded in 2013, and originallybased in Reykjavík, Iceland, before relocating to Berlin
Klang original backersinclude Greylock Partners, Joi Ito, and David Helgason, as well as original investors London Venture Partners.
The
latest tranche of funding will be used toexpand its dev team and for continued production on Seed which is in pre-alpha at this stage —
with no release date announced yet.
Nor is there a confirmed pricing model
We understand the team is looking at a variety of ideas at this stage, such astying the pricing to the costs of simulating the
entities.
They have released the below teaser showing the pre-alpha build of the game — which is described as a persistent simulation
where players are tasked with colonizing an alien planet, managing multiple characters in real-time and interacting with characters managed
by other human players they encounter in the game space.
The persistent element refers to the game engine maintaining character activity
after the player has logged off — supporting an unbroken simulation.
Klang touts its founders& three decades of combined experience
working on MMOsEVE OnlineandDust 514, and now being rolled into designing and developing the large, player-driven world they&re building
with Seed.
Meanwhile London-based Improbable bagged a whopping $502M for its virtual world builder SpatialOSjust over a year ago
The dev platform lets developers design and build massively detailed environments — to offer what it bills as a new form of simulation on
a massive scale — doing this by utilizing distributed cloud computing infrastructure and machine learning technology to run a swarm
ofhundreds of game engines so it can support a more expansive virtual world vs software running off ofa single engine or server.
Northzone
partner Paul Murphy, who is leading the investment in Klang, told us: &It is unusual to raise for a specific title, and we are for all
intents and purposes investing inKlangas a studio
We are very excited about the team and the creative potential of the studio
But our investment thesis is based on looking for something that really stands out and is wildly ambitious over and above everything else
That is how we feel about the potential of Seed as a simulation.&
