Gaming-focused UnCaged Studios raises $ 24 million to build great cryptocurrencies – TechCrunch

UnCaged Studios, a web3-focused gaming studio, has raised $ 24 million in a Series A funding round to continue to grow the cryptocurrency game industry.

The increase includes investors from Griffin Gaming Partners, Vgames, Maverick Ventures Israel, Drive by DraftKings and 6th Man Ventures. Series A follows a $ 4 million token pre-sale for its Solana-focused game, MonkeyLeague. No valuation was published.

“We could have taken money from crypto funds, but it’s stronger to take it from the gaming industry and believers,” Raz Friedman, co-founder of UnCaged, told TechCrunch. “We are primarily a gaming company that uses and brings web3 into gaming, rather than being a web3-first company.”

The game studio was co-founded by brothers Raz and Tal Friedman. Both previously worked for a listed gaming company Playtika, but saw the current play-to-earn ecosystem as unsustainable.

“I’ve seen the success of Axie Infinity and The Sandbox,” Tal said. “Success is already there, but the games that are made are not in the quality they should be … as people who have developed economies for games, we want to create communities and games that can be sustainable for years with excitement and entertainment at the core of the.”

The capital will be used to continue to develop the football game MonkeyLeague to make money, as well as to create future games and infrastructure for web3 games.

“For us, we believe that all big companies should start with a big hit,” said Raz. “Our focus now is to create a fantastic game around MonkeyLeague that is profitable for the company, so that we have the resources to expand our technology and content base.”

The second phase of UnCaged will focus on how to manage a good game in web3 while creating more games around games to earn concepts, Raz said.

“We are already making money, but [the funding is] a way to bring high production content … this entertainment is very expensive in team and talent, “said Raz.

In general, financing of the web3 gaming industry has been unaffected by cryptocurrency as capital continues to flow into space.

Last month, Immutable, an Australia-based web3 gaming company, launched a $ 500 million developer and venture capital fund, Robbie Ferguson, president and co-founder of Immutable, told TechCrunch. Recently, the crypto- and entertainment game company Cauldron raised $ 6.6 million last week to build “Pixar of web3”

“People in the traditional gaming industry want to understand that [web3] is the next phase of gaming, “Tal said.” It’s not just about using cryptocurrencies in gaming, but making community a part of the game itself. Web3 gives real power to players who are partners and share revenue, which is a big change. “