San Francisco-based blockchain-based game development studio Laguna Games has raised US$5M in a seed round led by BITKRAFT Ventures and Delphi Digital. 

The round also attracted participation from Transcend fund, Headline Ventures, and Polygon Studios. The studio says it intends to use the new capital to build out a portfolio of games, with an initial focus on Crypto Unicorns, an open-ended digital pet collection game leveraging blockchain-based assets. 

Laguna Games was founded by Aron Beierschmitt, who has been building mobile games for a decade, and Steven Garcia, former lead engineer at GarageGames, Ngmoco, and DeNA. The studio is focused on creating titles that are living worlds, designed for real-time, large scale, and highly social competition. 

The studio’s first digital nation, Crypto Unicorns, is based around unique Unicorn NFTs which players can utilise in a farming simulation, along with secondary battle loops including jousting, racing, and team RPG. The marketplace is being seeded with 10,000 genesis Unicorn egg NFTs, which will be sold in a pre-sale slated for 15 November 2021. As the only Unicorn genesis eggs that will ever exist, they will form the foundation of the long-term game economy. 

Crypto Unicorns is built to be Ethereum Virtual Machine compatible, and at launch, will be available on the Polygon Network. 

Commenting on developments, Aron Beierschmitt, Co-Founder and CEO of Laguna Games, said: “The blockchain gaming industry is experiencing explosive growth and we are convinced that we are on the verge of the next platform wave. As long-time free-to-play game developers, we are excited to move away from the extractive nature of F2P into fostering and nurturing community-owned game economies through a movement we’ve coined as Play-and-Earn (PAE). Our hope is that Crypto Unicorns will introduce millions of new players globally to the benefits of asset ownership as well as the wider Web3 movement.”

Piers Kicks, Senior Associate at BITKRAFT Ventures, added: “We couldn’t be more excited to back Laguna on their mission to usher in the next generation of blockchain games. Aron and his team possess a rare combination of deep gaming expertise and a strong vision for the role crypto plays in the industry’s future. We firmly believe that the projects on their roadmap, starting with Crypto Unicorns, will be a significant addition to the space as a whole and bring us rich new communities along with them.”

Staying with BITKRAFT Ventures, last month the firm led a $3.5M seed round in Los Angeles-based startup independent game development studio FuzzyBot.

Lenovo™, Electronic Arts Inc. (EA), and Respawn Entertainment have extended their PC and monitor partnership with the Apex Legends Global Series. 

The deal will see Lenovo provide more than 400 high-performance Lenovo Legion PCs and gaming monitors for all Apex Legends Global Series Majors. 

Commenting on the news, Emily Ketchen, CMO and Vice President of Intelligent Devices Group, Lenovo, said: “The popularity of esports is skyrocketing and striving to be increasingly inclusive with more players forming teams – growing its worldwide fanbase to over 474 million total viewers on the edge of their seats. With all eyes on this competitive industry, it’s now a lasting cultural phenomenon without borders. 

“The future of global esports will be powered by increasingly sophisticated, more immersive gaming devices like our premium Lenovo Legion lineup that can successfully accelerate a gamer’s honed skills and help them win. That’s why we’re thrilled to once again be the official PC and Monitor of the Apex Legends Global Series.”

The partnership will also see Lenovo gather user insights from elite players gaming on Lenovo Legion products when under pressure. Those inputs will then be combined with data and research captured from influencer councils and the Lenovo Legion gaming community, and channeled to the company’s engineers, designers, and user experience teams, to help deliver more advanced, high-performance future generation devices. 

The thick of competition season kicks off online with Split One of the Pro League on 16 October, 2021, which continues on into the final series of the live championship in July 2022. The partnership is expected to run through July 2022.

Former Director of Esports at Momentum Worldwide, Tatiana Tacca, has launched Oni Vision, a new consulting and advisory practice aiming to bridge the gap between “brands, agencies, gaming properties, and entertainment IP” and the wider “nerd culture.” 

In addition to helping brands and agencies tap the potential of esports and video gaming, Oni Vision will be helping clients identify crossover opportunities in mediums like live streaming, anime, and music. Oni Vision will also be focusing on helping organisations develop and promote gaming initiatives aimed at women. 

Specifically, Oni Vision is offering services including brand sponsorship consultation, strategy + creative ideation, influencer sourcing + activation, strategic partnerships + marketing, cross-cultural collaborations, and tentpole activation + execution.

Before leaving Momentum Worldwide at the start of 2021, Tacca worked in the gaming space for more than a decade, with various brand agencies and video game publishers, including Endeavour, The Topps Company, and Ubisoft’s mobile games division Gameloft. During this time she worked as marketing lead on several mobile games officially licensed by brands including Marvel, Disney, the NBA, and MLB. 

Since leaving Momentum, she has worked with major clients including Twitch and Intel, and will be working with companies and brands including Funimation, Dr Pepper, eFuse, and Lenovo through Oni Vision.

Commenting on her new venture, Tacca said: “The esports and gaming space has become a creative playground for partnerships, as esports continues to create new opportunities by evolving around new trends, adapting to new innovations and integrating cross-cultures. By being a creative consultancy partner, an ongoing focus will be to elevate new initiatives to help grow the industry, recognise the whitespaces and become a source of inspiration for the broader gaming space. To match the ever-changing landscape, the aim of Oni Vision is also to provide thought-leadership and expertise at a more accessible level for a multitude of organisations.”

Digital inventory management firm Horizm has entered the world of esports, signing a deal with newly established Brazilian esports organisation TropiCaos.

The partnership will see TropiCaos, which currently fields a Free Fire team in the Second Division of LBFF, leverage Horizm’s artificial intelligence-based solution to audit and value its digital assets, adding transparency to its results and values. 

Pedro Mestriner, CEO of Horizm, commented: “The partnership with TropiCaos represents another important step for Horizm in Brazil. It is a project with the face of the country and very promising. We entered the world of Esports in Brazil on the right foot.”

Rodrigo Martinez, CEO of TropiCaos, added: “Digital assets represent a great revenue opportunity in the country and in the Esports niche. This partnership and pioneering spirit are a great opportunity to add value to our steps and vision of the future for the organisation.”

Though the TropiCaos deal is Horizm’s first esports partnership, the company’s existing clients include a number of sports federations, along with big name football clubs like Arsenal, Benfica, Chelsea, Galatasaray, Inter Milan, Real Madrid, Wolverhampton Wanderers. In total, the company says it manages over US$1 billion worth of digital inventory for more than 80 properties.

Esports entertainment broadcaster ESTV has partnered with data and visualisation provider Betegy, to drive enhanced value for fans and sponsors across the esports, wagering and wider entertainment markets. 

Los Angeles-based ESTV distributes esports content on a linear programming schedule, with plans to launch VOD content on a new ESTV+ platform in 2022.

Warsaw and New York-based Betegy will execute all digital marketing and branded social-content distribution for each live event and original series across ESTV’s platforms. The companies also will work to identify, secure and activate major brand sponsors that align with ESTV’s content and its audience.

Eric S. Yoon, ESTV Founder & CEO, commented: “As ESTV distributes the world’s best esports content on a linear programming schedule, Betegy will be a foundational pillar executing digital marketing and branded social content distribution from within their innovative platform.

“Partnering with Betegy’s proprietary software to reach beyond ESTV’s unique yet key audiences in every niche of the digital ecosystem, ESTV will be able to facilitate marketing on behalf of their content creators while fulfilling unprecedented reach and engagement for said brand partner.”

Alex Kornilov, CEO of Betegy, added: “We are building the bridge between raw data and the viewer, instantly bringing that data to life in order to truly engage the fan and to bring them more deeply into the action.

“ESTV is an innovator and first-mover in the rapidly growing category of esports entertainment programming. We are fortunate to work with a broad range of sports and gaming organizations and contests and an ESTV alliance enables us to demonstrate the powerful impact visualized data can bring to esports programming across screens.”

The partnership, which was announced following the Global Gaming Expo (G2E) convention in Las Vegas, comes after several other important commercial agreements were signed by Betegy, most recently including PokerGO, Germany’s Tipico, as well as Parimatch, Bwin and Coingaming.io.

Recently ESTV was added to WatchFree+, VIZIO’s free streaming service on SmartCast™. The company also signed a global distribution agreement with Europe-based esports company ESE Entertainment, adding an important step in ESTV’s global expansion, and forged an exclusive partnership with NFL Alumni enabling an esports event at the 2022 Super Bowl among other collaborations.

AYO.NEWS says:

In July this year, AYO.NEWS’ very own Simona Pinterova caught up with Alex Kornilov, CEO of Betegy, to find out how the company went from providing sports data, to developing a groundbreaking solution that supplies high-quality automated graphics, animations, banners, widgets, and texts, for both traditional sports and esports.

Southeast Asian organisation EVOS Esports has signed an exclusive agreement with Zipmex, one of the Asia-Pacific region’s largest digital assets platforms. 

The deal will see EVOS Esports’ Singapore Mobile Legends division help market Zipmex via logo exposure and running streaming campaigns. Zipmex currently has more than 1 million users, and recently announced a successful Series B investment round, securing over US$41M. 

Regarding the team’s journey into the digital assets space, EVOS Esports’ Business Development Lead for Singapore, Stefan Chong, commented: “Zipmex is a huge start. When we sat down with them back in early August, we loved their energy. Their reputation in the digital assets space is ever-growing and we are extremely humble on their willingness to work with EVOS Esports as part of their marketing roadmap.”

EVOS Esports won the first Mobile Legends Professional League (MPL) earlier this year, and is looking to retain the crown this weekend in another title run. The organisation also fields rosters in titles including PUBG Mobile, Free Fire, CODM, LoL: Wild Rift, AoV, and Valorant. 

Earlier this month, EVOS Esports announced its second NFT collaboration, with Sora’s Dreamworld.