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Scopely acknowledged that the funding announcement comes at a difficult time for many of its employees and players.
On Thursday (19 March), mobile games developer and publisher Scopely announced that it has raised a further $200m, bringing the company’s Series D round to a total of $400m.
To date, Scopely has raised more than $650m in funding and the company now has a post-money valuation of $1.9bn.
The Californian company received backing from Advance and The Chernin Group (TCG). An executive from Advance, which counts Condé Nast among its holdings, will join Scopely’s board of directors, while a TCG representative will join as a board adviser.
With the latest round of funding, Scopely plans to make additional investments and acquisitions. The company’s latest purchase was FoxNext Games, which the business acquired in January 2020. Scopely has announced its intentions to sell FoxNext’s PC gaming business Cold Iron Studios, as the firm wants to maintain its focus on mobile gaming.
The LA-headquartered company also acquired Dublin mobile games start-up Digit in May 2019. Digit is best known for its mobile games The Walking Dead: Road to Survival and WWE Champions.
The funding
Scopely announced the funding, which was raised earlier this year, while acknowledging that it comes at a difficult time as people in Europe and the US take significant measures to slow the spread of Covid-19.
The company’s co-CEOs, Walter Driver and Javier Ferreira, said: “While under normal circumstances we would celebrate this milestone broadly, our thoughts are focused on the wellbeing of our employees, their families, our players and all of our communities.”
Jesse Jacobs, co-founder and partner at TCG, which is a long-time investor in Scopely, added: “As the traditional media industry continues to go through unprecedented change, we believe that Scopely has all the ingredients for tremendous success – exposure to games (the fastest-growing sector in media), a scalable and durable technology platform, a diversified set of well-known IP, an attractive economic profile, and a team hyper-focused on execution and long-term success.”
Amid the coronavirus outbreak, other online games businesses have reported a boost as people who are social distancing and self-isolating turn to gaming for entertainment. This week, Chinese tech giant Tencent said that it has seen a 25pc boost in gaming revenue in the last quarter, which is the fastest rate of growth the company has seen since the first quarter of 2018.
Tencent attributed the growth to the addition of millions of new gamers after parts of Asia went into lockdown to limit the spread of Covid-19. The Chinese company also owns popular social media platform WeChat, which saw a boost in usage during this period.
