Proof of Play, developer of the popular blockchain-based social MMORPG Pirate Nation, has revealed that it raised a whopping $33 million in seed funding. Andreessen Horowitz and Greenoaks Capital were the joint lead investors in this round. Anchorage Digital, Mercury, Firebase, Zynga, Alchemy, and several angel investors were also involved.
A look at the Proof of Play mission
The FarmVille co-creator and former Zynga executive Amitt Mahajan is at the helm of Proof of Play as the CEO and is leading the company on its mission to make fun and accessible blockchain games. Proof of Play’s debut game is a social role-playing game called Pirate Nation, which went into beta in December and officially launched on Thursday in “free-to-play” mode. The F2P mode requires no payment to start playing, but there’s currently a waitlist.
In the F2P edition, players won’t need an NFT to create a character. NFT owners, however, enjoy a number of privileges not available to those without NFTs. The free-to-play version caters to a wider audience by providing a more casual user experience.
Proof of Play says that its users can modify and grow the game by remixing and adding their own material, despite the fact that it runs on a blockchain network. The company says it has a set of technological and product innovations that will “quickly immerse players in fun gameplay without the need for any prior knowledge of blockchain.
The company has a distinct goal in mind, and it says that it is committed to making entertaining games rather than merely cool tech. Its goal is to help developers make on-chain games that gamers can jump right into and have a good time with. The company plans to channel the newly acquired capital to increase its team of software developers and to further its search for a commercially successful game.
To encourage other developers to make games and apps using the same technologies, Proof of Play intends to open-source its technology for creating fully on-chain games.