Instant mobile games platform Artie has secured $10 million in seed funding.
Recent investors include Zynga founder Mark Pincus, Kevin Durant and Rich Kleiman's Thirty Five Ventures, Google vice president of product Manuel Bronstein and YouTube founder Chad Hurley.
"A key part of YouTube's early growth strategy was making sure our videos could be shared and played anywhere without friction. Artie is taking the same approach for high-quality mobile games," said Hurley.
However, Artie has also been supported by Founders Fund, Uber, Warner Music Group, SpaceX and various executives from Amazon, Twitter and Square.
In one place
Artie's tech enables users to play games via social media, messaging and video platforms, eradicating the need to download additional apps.
As such, the 30 per cent fees experienced through storefronts such as Google Play and the App Store will no longer be an issue to those in the mobile games industry.
"It's becoming increasingly difficult to make the economics of the mobile games business work," said Artie CEO and co-founder Ryan Horrigan.
Between the rising cost of user acquisition within the app store ecosystem, the inherent friction that comes with app downloads, and the onerous 30 per cent cut that app stores take, it's nearly impossible. Our platform solves this."
Get playing
Moreover, it provides a new revenue stream for influencers, celebrities and athletes by allowing them to bring branded games to their viewers.
The newfound funding will be put towards further development of the platform, with plans to launch an initial slate of games this year.
Currently, Artie has several partnerships with a range of people, including influencers for its first batch of games. As part of the first slate of games, players will be treated to a title based on a superhero IP and an Alice in Wonderland puzzler.
"Consumers discover the vast majority of their content from friends and the people they follow, but games are the only kind of content that require you to go download separate apps," said Artie CTO and co-founder Armando Kirwin.
"Artie's technology completely upends this paradigm, allowing consumers to play high-quality mobile games the instant they discover them."
