Forge, a San Francisco, CA-based video game platform that connects and rewards gamers for their gaming achievements and ongoing play, raised $11m in seed funding.
The round waas led by Makers Fund, BITKRAFT Ventures, and Animoca Brands, with participation from Hashkey Capital, Polygon Ventures, Formless Capital and Adaverse, existing investors Griffin Gaming Partners, Riot Games, and Sony Innovation Fund, and angel investors Riot Games founder Marc Merrill, Twitch founders Emmett Shear and Kevin Lin, TSM founder Dan Dinh, Kabam founders Kevin Chou and Holly Liu, YouTube founder Steve Chen, Krafton CEO CH Kim, former Discord CMO Eros Resmini (The Mini Fund), and ESL founder Ralf Reichart.
Founded by gaming pioneer Dennis “Thresh” Fong, Crunchyroll founder Kun Gao, and Cyence founder George Ng, Forge originated as a project within GGWP, an AI-powered game moderation platform that the team launched in 2020, and has since been spun off as a new company. Forge’s mission is to help gamers unlock the value of their gaming profiles and be rewarded for their contributions to gaming communities.
At launch, users will be able to link their disparate online gaming and social accounts to create a Forge profile that represents their unique passion and experiences across games. Players will then be able to access a seasonal Season Pass containing quests that allow them to earn XP to level up their Season Pass and unlock game content and access rewards, including in-game content from Forge’s partner games like cosmetics, item/character unlocks, virtual currency, and early beta access. All participating beta users will also be eligible to win additional rewards via Forge weekly bonus rewards, including everything from Amazon gift cards to a brand new gaming PC.
Forge is partnering with games including Genopets, Mojo Melee, Pixelmon, Portal Fantasy, Rushdown Revolt and The Sandbox for launch week, with new games added each week during the beta period, to help them reach the Forge community and reward their most passionate players and community members. Developers interested in joining the Forge platform can sign up at: https://forge.gg/developer.
Forge is now open to the public in Beta and users can sign up at forge.gg. Players who join Forge and participate in the community will have a chance to receive a limited edition founders badge which will unlock special features in the Forge community and on the Forge service.
FinSMEs
18/09/2023