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Rec Room, the Seattle-based eponymous development studio behind the virtual hangout / game maker Recreation room, has raised $ 20 million. Madrona Venture Group led the Series C round, which included participation from DAG, First Round, Index and Sequoia. Total funding for the 4-year start-up is nearly $ 50 million.
This ends a great year for Recreation room, which has experienced a period of explosive growth during the course of the pandemic lockdown. Developed in the Belltown neighborhood of Seattle, Recreation room it is advertised on its website as an “online universe, where you play and create games with friends from all over the world.”
Very much in the spirit of similar projects like Roblox – planning to go public – Recreation room is a free download that allows players to use a collection of tools to create virtual rooms, playable objects and games, such as paintball and laser tag, with a wealth of community-created content that grows all the time. It initially debuted in June 2016 on the Steam digital store, but has since grown to include several other platforms, including iOS, PlayStation 4, and Oculus, in both 2D and VR versions.
When the pandemic struck earlier this year, Rec Room quickly discovered that its users were finding ways to use Recreation room to replicate social contact, with in-game events including happy hours, birthday parties, math lessons, and even individual therapy sessions. At one point in March, Rec Room CEO Nick Fajt noted on Twitter that he was building a new room. Recreation room users every 12 seconds.
From September Recreation room announced that the size of its community had tripled since the previous year, and players had created more than 3 million of their virtual “rooms” or environments to hang out. Since then, the 45-person team at Rec Room has introduced more of the game’s tools and rewards, including UI updates as a creator wallet, while in use. Recreation room themselves to work from home amid the pandemic.
While Recreation room It reportedly still draws most of its users from the VR community, its expansion accelerating dramatically after its Xbox debut on December 3. According to Rec Room executive Shawn Whiting, speaking via email to GeekWire, Recreation room on Xbox it was a huge surprise success that essentially doubled the Rec Room audience size overnight. His Xbox rev made headlines earlier this week for reaching # 1 in the “free games” section of the Xbox store, beating out monsters that include Fortnite, Rocket League, and Call of Duty: War ZoneAnd, as of this writing, it’s still there. Rec Room has also pointed out that its Xbox community seems to be more “sticky” than users of other platforms, where its users are more likely to play it a second time and recommend it to their friends.
It’s hard to pinpoint a single reason why Recreation roomit was released on the Xbox, although you can take some guesswork. As for the rest of the top 10 in the free games category, most of them are explicitly violent, fast-paced, skill-based, have a firmly established community that is known to be toxic, or all four of them. time. Recreation roomThe only real competition within your niche is Roblox, which is hugely popular with kids under the age of 16 and hardly anyone else. If you are an adult Xbox user right now looking for a social app, especially if you are a new Series X owner | Yes, Recreation room it is really the only game in its particular niche.
in a Recreation room blog post, Fajt revealed that the game has surpassed 10 million members, with 1 million creators creating more than 4 million unique rooms, with users spending an average of 2.4 hours per day on Recreation room.
“2020 has not been the easiest year, but the positivity and creativity of Recreation room the community has been a really bright spot, ”Fajt wrote. “It has been wonderful to wake up every morning to check out rec.net and see a collection of new rooms, creations and events to explore. The endless amount of friendly people to meet and creative places to visit made the quarantine that little bit more bearable and we have everyone to thank for building a wonderful community. “
Rec Room plans to launch a Creators Compensation Program for the game in the first quarter of 2021, which will pay more than $ 1 million in bonuses to Recreation room users who have created particularly popular content for the game. The money from their latest round of funding is slated to go toward that program, as well as helping to expand the Rec Room team to make the Creators Compensation Program possible.
To summarize: Rec Room is now working on Recreation room inside Recreation room to expand Rec Room so you can do Recreation room larger.
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