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Appcharge, the firm transforming the mobile gaming space with its DTC platform, announced today that it closed a $26 million Series A funding round. Creandum led the round, with participation from Supercell, BITKRAFT Ventures, Moneta Ventures, and returning investors Play Ventures, Glilot Capital Partners, and several angel investors.
This latest round of investment will build upon the former seed funding of $5 million and enable Appcharge to further enlarge its suite of customizable, white-label solutions, meeting the rising need of game studios to boost revenue, diversify their products, and enhance player engagement.
Founder CEO Maor Sason and General Manager Roei Barassi have founded Appcharge. The company’s platform allows mobile game publishers to sell directly virtual goods and in-game currency for their players. This means that developers can keep up to 95% of what they collect as revenue, coupled with enhanced player loyalty and retention. Additionally, Appcharge offers its clients a single solution through fully branded web stores, gamified promotional offers, global payment systems, and mobile SDKs that enable in-app purchases. The platform currently powers web stores for top mobile gaming studios, including Huuuge Games, AppLovin, and Product Madness, processing over $200 million annually.
CEO Maor Sason commented on the significance of the funding and the shift in the mobile gaming landscape: “The gaming industry is undergoing a major transformation as Direct-To-Consumer models gain traction, driven by new regulations impacting traditional app stores and increasing user acquisition costs.”. Today, publishers are realizing the need to bypass intermediaries and go directly to consumers. This shift benefits everyone—players enjoy more value and a gaming experience tailored to their preferences, while publishers see higher revenue and stronger, more direct connections with their players.”
Appcharge’s innovative approach to mobile game monetization comes at a time when publishers are facing increasing pressure from rising user acquisition costs and the changing regulatory environment. The traditional app stores are under scrutiny by the regulators and have become, in favour of the publishers who want more control over revenue flow, a thing of the past. An important feature of Appcharge’s DTC model is it helps studios keep a larger chunk of their earnings and establish a far more tight and personalized relationship with their players.
The flexibility of its platform, combined with a full suite of tools, has made the platform popular with leading mobile game publishers. Appcharge’s white-label web stores allow publishers to remain within their brand identity, but the gamified offers of the platform offer a better and more engaging experience to players. With global payments and easy integration of its mobile SDK, Appcharge makes it possible for publishers to streamline their payment processing while allowing a seamless process for players around the world.
With the Series A funding, Appcharge intends to keep its growth momentum and scale towards the full-fledged needs of the mobile gaming market. The team will look to expand, enhance product offerings, and further build out infrastructure to support the increasing demand from game publishers. The funds will also accelerate product development, improve onboarding processes, and grow Appcharge’s reach to more gaming studios across the globe.
Since its inception, Appcharge has been a leading participant in the mobile gaming market that solves both financial and user experience challenges for game publishers. In a very straightforward manner, the methodology by Appcharge enables publishers to control their revenues, but simultaneously, end-users would benefit from a more rewarding and personalized experience. That is why the firm has laid a basis upon which it is assured of playing an important role in shaping the future of monetization in mobile games going forward.
Headquartered in Israel with a staff of 50, Appcharge looks to be on the verge of becoming an innovator in one of the rapidly changing mobile gaming industries. It would allow game studios to eliminate the intermediaries that have dominated the mobile industry for so long and deliver their products directly to their audience, thus taking the lead in the eventual monetization of mobile games.
source: calcalistech
