VR developer ForeVR Games today announced it has raised an additional $7 million in seed capital, bringing its total capital raise to $8.5 million. The studio is focused on bringing classic real world games—like bowling—into VR with an emphasis on social play.
Having launched in 2020, ForeVR is a newcomer to the VR space; the studio’s first game, ForeVR Bowl, launched less than three months ago. But that hasn’t stopped it from aggressively raising capital.
Today ForeVR announced that it has raised an additional $7 million in seed capital, bringing its total raise to $8.5 million. The latest investment was led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from Galaxy Interactive, All Star Capital, Mark Pincus, and Emmett Shear.
The studio says it plans to use the new funding to focus on building more social VR games, growing its development team, expanding to more platforms, and continuing to improve ForeVR Bowl over time.
ForeVR Bowl launched back in May on Quest and the studio has now confirmed that it’s due to release on Steam “soon.”
$8.5 million in seed funding might seem like a lot for a studio building relatively simple games like ForeVR Bowl, but the founders are pitching investors on a grander scheme—with the premise that VR is on the cusp of going mainstream, ForeVR says it has a singular goal: “to translate the most popular and classic IRL games into immersive virtual reality experiences where friends and families of all ages can connect and have fun.”
With the studio’s co-founders, Marcus Segal and Michael Pagano Doom, having backgrounds in Zynga, it’s clear why they believe that simple games mixed with social fun has big potential for VR. And it’s no surprise that they’re attracting investors that believe the same thing; Mark Pincus, the founder of Zynga, is among them.
“ForeVR Bowl and the rest of the ForeVR lineup represent the best of what’s possible with VR games and, I believe, will be as important to this medium as Zynga was to mobile,” said Sam Englebardt, of Galaxy Digital, one of the studio’s investors. “[Co-founders] Marcus and Mike are masters of blending hyper fun and social gameplay with just enough realism—and some killer music—to make you feel like you’re there and make you never want to leave. I’ll see you at the lanes!”
ForeVR hasn’t announced any games beyond ForeVR Bowl but isn’t hiding its intentions to build out a host of titles in the future. Given the focus on bringing real-world activities to life in VR, what do you want to see from the studio next?
