Survios, the studio behind VR titles The Walking Dead: Onslaught (2020), Creed: Rise to Glory (2018), and Raw Data (2017), has secured another round of financing to the tune of $16.7 million. The news was first reported by Venture Beat.
Survios’ latest round brings the company’s overall funding to $70.9 million, with its most recent Series C bringing in the lion’s share of $50 million back in late 2016.
The round was financed by a number of South Korea-based companies, and was led by SeAH Group’s investment wing Irongrey with participation from Woori Technology Investment, KNET Venture Fund, Seoul Investment Partners, and Samsung Next. Silicon Valley’s Shasta Ventures and Lux Capital also took part in the round.
With the new funding, Survios has brought in Mike Medrano as VP of Marketing (previously of PUBG and Blizzard), TQ Jefferson as Chief Product Officer, and Art Director Tate Mosesian (previously of Naughty Dog).
Survios’ CEO Seth Gerson, who took the post in 2018, tells VentureBeat that he sees the funding as “a ‘Survios grows up’ round.” Gerson sighed on to Survios as Chief Business Officer in 2016.
Although there’s only been a few true indie success stories in the VR industry so far, according to Gerson virtual reality is about to hit its stride with the recent pickup of VR headset sales.
“The units are increasing, and you can really drive a real business now,” Gerson tells VentureBeat. “The opportunity to ship more than a million units of a game is there now, with maybe 8 million units in the market. That’s been happening while we kept hearing about the trough of disillusionment. You don’t have to be an economics major to know that demand is outstripping supply.”
Founded in 2013, Survios is one of the most senior VR development studios out there, now with seven full-realized VR titles to its name. In addition to consumer VR game creation, the studio also operates as a VR publisher of location-based entertainment games, with a network of thousands of locations across 60-plus countries.
With COVID-19 shutting down many VR arcades, the studio reiterates its commitment to making cross-platform titles for consumers.