Gaming

If you’ve been following the gaming space – or just the state of the world, generally – over the past 12 months, this shouldn’t come as a major surprise. Spending saw big increases pretty much across the board in 2020, as a homebound populace sought comfort and distraction in gaming. Read More

So it turns out that Roblox is worth $29.5 billion.

That’s the lesson the market learned this week when the gaming platform company announced that it had raised $520 million in an epic Series H.

For a company valued at just $4 billion last Read More

We last polled our network of investors on the topic of gaming infrastructure startups back in May just as it was becoming clear what pandemic opportunities were in store for gaming startups.

Accel’s Amit Kumar told us at the time that “social and interactivity layers spanning across these games” were Read More

Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)

In February 2020, gaming platform Roblox was valued at $4 billion, but after announcing a $520 million Series H this week, it’s now worth $29.5 billion.

“Sure, you could argue that Roblox enjoyed an epic 2020, thanks in part to COVID-19,” writes Alex Wilhelm this morning. “That helped its valuation. But there’s a lot of space between $4 billion and $29.5 billion.”

Alex suggests that Roblox’s decision to delay its IPO and raise an enormous Series H was a grandmaster move that could influence how other unicorns will take themselves to market. “A big thanks to the gaming company for running this experiment for us.”

I asked him what inspired the headline; like most good ideas, it came to him while he was trying to get to sleep.

“I think that I had ‘The Queen’s Gambit’ somewhere in my head, so that formed the root of a little joke with myself. Roblox is making a strategic wager on method of going public. So, ‘gambit’ seems to fit!”

This has been quite a week.

Instead of walking backward through the last few days of chaos and uncertainty, here are three good things that happened:

• Google employee Sara Robinson combined her interest in machine learning and baking to create AI-generated hybrid treats.
• A breakthrough could make water desalination 30%-40% more Read More
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Epic today announced the acquisition of Rad Game Tools, maker of game development tools for many years. They’ve stayed largely behind the scenes, but many gamers will recognize the colorful Bink Video logo, which has appeared in the openings of many a title over the years.

“Our work with Epic goes Read More

Roblox is now one of the world’s most valuable private companies in the world after a monster Series H raise brings the social gaming platform a stratospheric $29.5 billion valuation. The company won’t be private for long, though.

The $520 million raise led Read More

Following a slate of temporary and permanent bans from a number of the top online platforms, popular video streaming service Twitch today confirmed that it has disabled the President of the United States’ account. A spokesperson for the site told TechCrunch,

In light of Read More

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So many new mobs

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Throughout 2019, Microsoft experimented with building a real-world, augmented reality Minecraft game designed in the same vein as Pokémon GO. Called Minecraft Earth, they finally opened it up to everyone in November of 2019.

In just a few months, it’ll shut down and Read More

The gaming industry has had plenty of watershed moments in 2020 as consumer entertainment habits have shifted in response to the pandemic. One trend has been the crystallization of MMOs as social entertainment hubs that serve more needs for users than ever before.

Following my survey of gaming-focused investors Read More

While gaming giants Sony and Microsoft have made M&A a critical part of their strategic growth plans, Nintendo has always seemed to be more reluctant to bring outside talent into the fold of its video game Read More