Crime City creator scores $20 million funding deal
Mobile version planned this year as company looks to triple size
Social gaming developer Funzio has receiving $20 million in Series A funding, led by IDG Ventures in the U.S. and IDG Capital Partners in China.
Start-up studio Funzio launched Crime City in September 2010, with the game becoming one of the top five Facebook titles of the year. The game currently has more than 75,000 daily active users, seven million monthly players, and a user rating of 4.9/5.0 - the highest of any game with an equivalent number of daily users.
Funzio co-founder and CEO Ken Chiu previously held the same roles at iPhone social gaming company Storm8 (aka Team Lava), and was general manager at Zynga's XWars Studio.
A mobile version of Crime City is planned for later in the year, with Funzio planning to use the new funding to triple its team size this year and scale its business to develop multiple games in parallel and launch them more quickly.
As a result of the financing IDG Ventures managing director Phil Sanderson will join the Funzio board. Playdom co-founder and former chairman Rick Thompson also participated in the latest round of funding and serves as Funzio's chairman.
"At Funzio, we're passionate about building phenomenal games that people love playing. We feel very fortunate to have Phil Sanderson join our board because he shares our values and vision - creating awesome cross-platform games for Facebook, iOS and Android," said Chiu.
"The Funzio team is unique in that they have been in the social gaming space since its inception and created some of the biggest hits on Facebook and iPhone," said Sanderson.
"Now they're transforming the industry by taking a cross-platform approach with AAA quality social games so people can play on Facebook and mobile - two of the biggest markets."