Argentinian social gaming company MetroGames, has just raised $5 million in series A funding from game developer Playdom. According to a release, the investment will be used to expand MetroGames’ development of games and its social gaming platform. Playdom’s CEO, John Pleasants will join MetroGames’ board.
MetroGames has over 30 games on both Facebook and its own standalone social gaming site. In the release, Pleasants said that he believes that the company will become a “big player in the social gaming market.”
It’s no secret that Playdom is eying the Facebook gaming market that Zynga dominates. The social gaming company just bought Facebook game developer Offbeat Creations. In November, Playdom raised a massive $43 million at a $260 million valuation. As we reported at that time, Playdom’s presence on MySpace was strong. Their Mob Wars game has 14 million or so users there, and the company was likely pulling in $60 million or more in revenue at that time. According to our stats from November, Playdom had 28 million monthly game users with 60% of traffic is from MySpace v. 40% from Facebook.
Argentine. The word is “Argentine.”
Do they have US offices? How many employees?
Nice work for MetroGames. The social gaming industry is growing so rapidly it amazing. With the usage of Facebook and other social networking platforms, I’m glad to see viable businesses emerge and capitalize on this market.
Leena, get your facts straight. “Mob Wars” is the game they cloned and were litigated against. Their cloned game is called “Mobsters”.
It seems John is an extremely well liked guy: http://www.talkburst.com/photos/396394-John-Pleasants which explains why he has held so many great positions at great companies.
Oops that’s the wrong link this is the right one: http://www.talkburst.com/person/396394-John-Pleasants
Hm…
Great to see the social gaming market thriving, guess it was only a matter of time before something like this happened. There is more information on social gaming here: http://blog.socialmaximizer.com/social-media-marketing-in-the-world-of-online-gaming/
used to play video games as a kid
really like it……
Hadn’t heard of MetroGames before so I went to check out their website.
I was surprised to find that many of the games are blatant ripoffs of other games… some being almost exact copies.
Is this just what everyone does now?
I’ve been thinking of developing a few games… and have been trying to come up with new, original ideas… but if copying others is legit AND makes money, why the heck am I wasting my time working on original ideas?