Quick take:
- The fund leverages the resources of web3 gaming giants Immutable and Polygon Labs to identify high-growth opportunities for investors.
- King River Capital will lead IGF’s investment process with Polygon and Immutable providing key gaming expertise.
- The fund has already invested in Pixelmon, MetalCore, the Guild of Guardians, and My Pet Hooligan.
King River Digital has launched a $100 million gaming fund with Web3 gaming giants Polygon Labd and Immutable. The company said on Tuesday that the privately offered fund is only open for investment by certain types of professional and sophisticated investors.
Some of the earliest participants in the fund include a commitment from Alpha Wave Ventures, a venture fund backed by Alpha Wave Global and the Abu Dhabi Royal Group’s Chimera Capital.
Web3 gaming platform Merit Circle and several angel investors including Mike Arrington of Arrington Capital, Sonic Boom Ventures’s Steve Kokinos, James and Robbie Ferguson – the Co-Founders of Immutable, and Sandeep Nailwal of Polygon Labs have also committed to invest in the Inevitable Games Fund.
Leveraging the gaming expertise offered by Polygon Labs and Immutable, the fund has already invested in carefully promising early-stage gaming projects.
Among the projects backed include Pixelmon, an NFT gaming API, which in February raised $8 million in a seed round backed by Delphi Digital and Animoca Brands. Studio369’s MMO gaming project MetalCore is also one of the projects that IGF has deemed to provide a high-growth opportunity for investors. MetalCore recently raised $5 million in a funding round backed by Bitkraft Ventures, Delphi Digital, Sanctor Capital, SpartanGroup, Arrington Capital and others.
The popular NFT gaming project and one of the first games on Immutable, the Guild of Guardians, is also among those that have already received backing from the IGF. The game has already obtained over 1 million pre-registrations ahead of its launch in Q2 2024.
Free-to-play gaming project My Pet Hooligan, which leverages emerging technologies like the blockchain to enhance user experience also makes it to IGF’s first portfolio.
King River Capital will spearhead the deployment of IGF capital across premier game studios, web3 infrastructure, and immersive gaming experiences deemed to be disruptive in the entertainment industry.
Commenting on the announcement, Zeb Rice, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at King River Capital said in a statement: “Spending on video games exceeds the global revenue from movies, streaming TV and the music industry, combined, and it is ripe for a huge technology shift.”
Rice believes despite the recent slowdown in blockchain gaming, the industry could follow the trajectory of mobile gaming, which nearly went to zero in 2008 before bouncing back to dominate 79% of the gaming market.
“We believe a similar shift has only just begun to web3 technology,” he said, adding “The Fund provides investors with an opportunity to gain unique access to the best web3 gaming projects globally and is designed to benefit from this multi-hundred billion dollar shift in spending to this disruptive new technology.”
Robbie Ferguson, President and Co-Founder of Immutable commented: “We are excited to be launching this pioneering fund in partnership with King River Capital and assisted by Polygon Labs. Our combined expertise, global relationships, and industry reach ideally position the Fund to identify and invest in the best web3 gaming and gaming infrastructure opportunities globally.”
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