RTW Confirms $50M Investment

It's now official.  The press release is going out even as we speak.  Realtime is now the proud owner of second round funding...

Congratulations to the company and we look forward to them buying us drinks sometime soon.

Capital from Maverick, NEA and WPP Positions Leading Game Developer for Accelerated Growth and Innovation

DUNDEE, Scotland, UK and BOULDER, Colo. – April 14, 2008 – Realtime Worlds, a leading independent video game developer, today announced that it has raised $50 million USD in Series B funding.  Maverick Capital, the renowned investment firm founded by Lee Ainslie, led the new investment round with existing investor New Enterprise Associates and WPP, a world leader in marketing communications services.  The Series B investment will support Realtime Worlds’ continued growth and expansion as the company develops new creative properties and brings innovative online gaming experiences to market.

            “Securing funding of this size from partners that are leading the financial and marketing communications industries further affirms Realtime Worlds’ position as one of the most creative, respected and successful game development companies in the world,” said David Jones, founder and CEO, Realtime Worlds.  “Since our founding, we have been fortunate to have some of the gaming industry’s top creative talent crafting amazing, groundbreaking interactive entertainment products.  With this new infusion of capital, Realtime Worlds is poised to deliver new original experiences to gamers around the globe and to push the boundaries of online gaming.”

Comments

[Marko]

This is great news for gaming in general and obviously the Scottish scene. I hope this aids the prompt release of APB this year. Hopefully RTW release a beta through tokens/codes ala Halo 3 and BFBC. I think using betas are very useful for both the gamers and the developers as it whets the appetite of the gamer and provides useful critique for the developer. I've found that playing through beta versions is a great way of building up anticipation for a game and gets the gaming community buzzing more than watching videos and looking at renders/screenshots of an upcoming title. It also serves as a genuine and fair view of how the gaming public will receive the game on launch. The views of a magazine/website review can be tainted by external pressure from the publisher or can be affected by one person's taste in games. Hopefully private/public beta is the future for gaming as it is the best way forward for game development. I've been playing the BFBC beta and it's a hell of a lot of fun. There are plenty of bugs in it (maybe plenty is too strong) but I'm sure the feedback that DICE have received will energise them into action and fix those niggles.