Riot veterans raise $ 37.5 million to launch Theorycraft Games

Industry veterans of Riot Games and other studios raised $ 37.5 million to start their Theorycraft Games studio.

The six-person studio is based in Seattle and Los Angeles and runs deep, competitive player-to-player games.

China’s NetEase has led the way, with other investors including NEA, Bitkraft Ventures, Griffin Gaming Partners, Sisu Game Ventures and a small group of strategic angel investors. It will use the capital to recruit diverse and driven talent from the Theorycraft team to develop a community-driven, PvP game available across multiple platforms.

A three-A team

The leaders once worked at Riot Games, Bungie, Blizzard and Valve Software. They helped make games like League of Legends, Halo, Destiny, Overwatch, Valorant and Team Fortress 2.

Joe Tung, CEO and founder of Theorycraft Games, led several genre-definition billion-dollar franchises as the former executive vice president of League of Legends, and he was also executive producer of Destiny and Halo.

“We want to make deep 10,000-hour games that are better when you play with your friends,” Tung said in an interview with GamesBeat. “We want to make games worthy of player theory.”

Theorycraft team includes Michael Evans (a former leader for Valorant, Overwatch and Halo) as chief technology officer; former creative director at Bungie, Mike Tipul, as creative director; Moby Francke (a former art director of Valorant, League of Legends, Dota 2 and Team Fortress 2) as art director; and former head of revenue and finance for the League of Legends franchise, Areeb Pirani, as chief operating officer.

“When you think of the founding team, we worked on the greatest games and intellectual properties in the world,” Tung said. ‘But building something new is the last frontier. There is always the unbroken itch in the back of your mind about what you would do if you could go from zero to one. ‘

A good time to start

This is a good time to start a game studio, as there are more game-oriented venture funds and other game investors than ever before. Tung said he is aware of 16 different game studios in Los Angeles with former Riot Games teams.

Tung said the team likes NetEase because it is willing to ‘go big with us’ and unleash the team with resources.

“They were true to their word,” Tung said. ‘If you’re playing a long game and going to play a 1000 hour game, that’s the only thing that matters, is it? Will the players get back at it? ”

Ambitious plans

Theorycraft Games aims to create deep games that give everyone the chance to join, to compete and to be infinitely delighted with stories that put players right in the center. Theorycraft plans to meet players wherever they are, no matter what platform they play on, where they live or how much money they can spend.

The company hires for a number of positions. Tung said his team is open to hiring people to work remotely, wherever they are available. He said the games that Theorycraft makes will, of course, be multiplatform, and if possible, it will work in a platform-like way.

Tung left Bungie in 2013 and went to work at League of Legends with a small team that moved quickly. He was of the opinion that he had to make a scratch to start a gaming business and that there was no better time to start. So he left Riot Games in October and started the company with a ‘huge amount of incredible talent willing to take a bet on themselves.’

He said the game industry needs game studios that want to serve players. He does not see much value in creating a sequel every few years, although he was happy to see Riot Games branch out and start new games. Now, at five months, he said the team has a prototype that they display to streamers and others outside the company.

“We build it in public and get a lot of feedback,” Tung said.

Tung said he hopes the team will be around 30 or 40 people when the first game hits the market.

“I come from a background of 600 people,” Tung said. ‘We spent a lot of time talking to companies with different models. We chatted with the Supercell team and we were really inspired by the fact that they can make their products with 12 people in a team. We think it’s really exciting that there are clear benefits to keeping the core development team as small as possible. ”

But the team will rely on different partners for different functions. Tung said he believes the next Disney will focus on gaming.

“We think there is unlimited growth and potential for a company that just wants to serve players better,” Tung said.