CCP Games, the company behind the hugely successful ‘EVE’ franchise and early VR adopters with VR space combat shooter EVE:Valkyrie, have announced they’re to expand their efforts in VR development with the help of $30M in funding.
CCP Games are one of the OG’s of virtual reality development. The company that made its name with space MMO EVE:Online, quickly realised, thanks to the enthusiasm from a small band of CCP Employees, that virtual reality was coming and they wanted in.
Now, the company behind the much anticipated and long-awaited multiplayer space combat title EVE:Valkyrie, has announced that their passion for VR is to be further fueled by a cool $30M investment led by New Enterprise Associates with participation from Novator Partners, a private equity firm.
EVE:Valkyrie, originally called EVE-VR, was born from a company initiative that gives employees a percentage of their time over to development of personal projects. A band of CCP programmers and designers, lead by Programmer Sigurður G. Gunnarsson, formed to build on their love of virtual reality, fueled by the stellar success of Oculus’ Rift DK1 Kickstarter campaign.
See Also: CCP Games’ Sigurður Gunnarsson Shares EVE: Valkyrie’s Origin Story
The game quickly took shape and was soon demonstrated to EVE players at the company’s EVE Fanfest in Reykjavik, Iceland. It caused a sensation and very soon afterwards EVE: Valkyrie was the poster boy for what could be archived in virtual reality gaming, demonstrated on successive iterations of Oculus hardware, the title has evolved alongside the industry.
See Also: Gamescom 2013: Hands On With EVE Valkyrie and the Oculus Rift HD Prototype
Outside of EVE:Valkyrie, the company has pushed on with other virtual reality related R&D initiatives. At EVE Fanfest this year, Ben Lang got the chance to go hands on with experiments involving Microsoft’s Kinect depth camera, where the company is looking to put the player into the virtual world. It’s also extended the EVE franchise to mobile VR with it’s Samsung Gear VR based shooter Gunjack.
“We believe VR will revolutionize not just video games, but the wider technology and media industry as a whole,” CCP CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson said. “We were there at the beginning, and this investment will give us strength to maintain our leading development efforts.”