Business of games: 10 biggest funding rounds, partnerships, and trends from the last week

investment round-up details from March 1st week. #221

Hey Friends, Greetings from Bangalore 💗

Investment news update, from March 1st week:

1. Web3 Infrastructure provider Avail raises $27M seed round

2. PlayMakers raises $1.5M for user-generated content for games

3. Lapse raises $30M for authentic social media photo-sharing app

4. Playtika earmarks up to $1.2bn for mergers and acquisitions

5. Scuti raises $10M to boost rewards for gamers

6. Sony India initiative, reveals 5 India Hero Project games coming to PS5 - Big Boot Games, imissmyfriends, Underdogs Studio, Holy Cow Productions, Tathvamasi

7. Readygg has appointed gaming leader Shawn Layden as an adviser and raised $4 million in funding for its Web3 gaming business.

8. Moonhub raises $1.4M for VR training

9. The Collective Ace Group acquires By Aliens mobile game studio

10. Industry veterans co-found Simply Sweet Games with plans to “revolutionize the word game genre"

Top Trends:

1. Ludo King surpasses 1 billion Play Store downloads :)

2. Mattel gets together with Zynga's Rollic for an all-new Barbie game on mobile

3. Saber Interactive buys itself back from Embracer in $500m deal

4. The number of studios in the Brazilian games industry grew by 3.2% in 2023, from 1,009 studios in 2021 to 1,042

5. Kwalee launches new mobile publishing platform Hitseeker

6. Game devs say Apple Arcade payouts have been on the decline for years

7. Over 2,000 games industry professionals lost their jobs in February, 5x year-over-year

8. Toys for Bob going indie after 19 years under Activision, might continue to work with Microsoft

9. Apple reverses course on death of Progressive Web Apps in EU

With Love, Cartic P
/ @iCartic