The company “ProbablyMonsters” has raised 200 million dollars in one go. Behind the company is former Bungie CEO Harold Ryan – and he follows a special approach to game development.
What happened? As the company announced, ProbablyMonsters raised 200 million dollars in a Series A funding round. According to Forbes, this is the largest amount ever raised by a video game developer in such an early funding round.
However, ProbablyMonsters is not a developer studio in the conventional sense. The company was founded in 2016 by Harold Ryan and considers itself more of a parent company of a family of game studios.
Who is Harold Ryan? Ryan started at Bungie in 2001 as a Test Manager and worked his way up to CEO over the years. In 2016, he left Bungie to shortly thereafter found ProbablyMonsters.
As early as 2019, the new company raised 18.8 million dollars in a funding round, a record that has now been surpassed. The company currently employs over 230 staff members who are to work on developing independent AAA titles.
On board are former developers from Destiny, Halo, God of War, or Apex Legends.
ProbablyMonsters has 3 projects in plan
This is what ProbablyMonsters is about: The company invests in new developer studios and developer careers. According to its own statement, the goal is to create an environment to “unite, guide, and empower talented game developers to create extraordinary interactive experiences” (via ProbablyMonsters).
The company is now behind three different studios that are all supposed to work on “Next-Gen AAA franchises.”
- First, there is the Firewalk studio, which is working on an online multiplayer game for the PS5. What exactly it will look like is still unknown. However, it is explicitly referred to as an AAA game, meaning a project with a big budget. There is said to be an exclusive publishing deal with Sony.
- The second studio, called “Cauldron,” is also working on an AAA game. However, it is said to be a story-driven single-player adventure.
- The third studio is not yet known by name. However, it is supposed to be working on a new cooperative RPG game.
With the funds raised now, the company is now secure enough to offer stable, creative, and long-lasting careers in the field of game development, according to Ryan (via ProbablyMonsters):
Our goal is to make ProbablyMonsters a home where developers with visions can build meaningful careers, thrive in a positive culture, and provide generations of players around the world with amazing experiences.
Even if not much is known about the respective projects yet, Ryan’s concept seems to convince investors. The philosophy of the company has been known for some time – now it apparently also receives the necessary money for the projects.
More about ProbablyMonsters, and another company with a similar approach, can be found here: How the ex-heads of Blizzard and Bungie now want to save AAA gaming.
