Ravensburger AG, Photo: Felix Kaestle
Ravensburger AG’s Next Ventures fund is investing $4.5 million in the new game crowdfunding platform Gamefound, the companies announced today. Germany-based toy and game maker Ravensburger launched Next Ventures earlier this year to fund innovation projects and start-up investments globally. This is Next Ventures fund’s first investment.
Gamefound was launched in beta last year by Polish game publisher Awaken Realms, which initially built the platform to handle its own games. To date over $22 million has been raised on the platform. For context, over $235 million was raised for tabletop games on Kickstarter in 2020, the last year for which information is available (see “Tabletop Games Blow Away Old Kickstarter Record”).
Individual successes on Gamefound to date include ISS Vanguard, which raised nearly $5 million; Too Many Bones: Unbreakable, which raised $3.4 million; and Robinson Crusoe Collector’s Edition, which raised over $2.6 million.
In addition to providing a way to raise funds, Gamefound also provides tools to help creators manage their campaigns and deliver the final games to their backers.
Gamefound plans to use the Ravensburger investment to fund improvements to the platform. “This investment will enable the Gamefound team to quickly grow and develop new functions bringing the platform to the next level,” Gamefound and Awaken Realms CEO Marcin Swierkot said in a statement accompanying the announcement.
For its part, Ravensburger expressed support for the crowdfunding model as a way to fund games. “Ravensburger evaluates over 1,000 game ideas a year,” Ravensburger Global Head of Games Filip Francke said in making the announcement. “We can ultimately publish only a handful of these games on our own, but hundreds more are concepts we know board game fans would really love.”
ICv2 interviewed Gamefound CEO Marcin Świerkot to learn more about this deal and the platform (see “ICv2 Interview: Gamefound CEO Marcin Świerkot“).
Source: ICV2
