PlayFirst Raises $16.5 Million in Series C Round
Posted by Nick O'Neill on December 19th, 2007 12:36 AMPlayFirst, an online publisher of casual games, has raised $16.5 million in a Series C financing round led by DCM. Existing investors, including Mayfield Fund, Trinity Ventures and Rustic Canyon Partners, also participated in the round. In addition to raising their Series C round, PlayFirst will be partnering with RockYou to enter the social networking space. The first game to be promoted via the Facebook platform will be Wedding Dash.
According to a statement, the partnership with RockYou will “enable the company to continue to expand its new business model of incorporating microtransactions into its popular games.” This sounds strikingly familiar to the strategy used by Buddy Media, the company that I broke the news about their first two rounds of financing via my AllFacebook blog. The partnership with RockYou appears to be centered around driving traffic to their first game on Facebook.
PlayFirst appears to be in direct competition with Miniclip who provides flash based games for the web. There are limited details about what “microtransactions” will be involved but I have a feeling that it will be some sort of reward system since, as John Welch, CEO of the company states, they have already integrated virtual goods into a few of their games including “Wedding Dash.” As Shervin Pishevar emphasized in my interview with him last week, social games are a rapidly expanding business.
It will be interesting to see how social gaming evolves over the coming months.
December 20th, 2007 at 9:57 am
I don’t quite see the direct competition with Buddy Media. We are building our a web-wide loyalty program working with anyone who wants to drive installs, viral growth and engagement. So we would see PlayFirst as a great parter. I see them VERY competitive with Webs.com, Presidio, MindJolt and the dozens of other “game networks” popping up each day. Regardless, it’s great to see money flowing into our sector. Congrats PlayFirst. You picked an awesome partner in RockYou and I’m sure you guys are going to kill it.