There’s more funding making its route to Istanbul’s gaming startups. A casual games developer Dream Games that made the popular game Royal Match — is announcing a $255 million Series C which valued the startup at $2.75 billion.

The Funding

This Series C is being led by Index Ventures, with Makers Fund, IVP, funds, and accounts managed by BlackRock, Kora, and Balderton Capital also participating. The funding will be used to continue investing in and developing Royal Match also to work on its next launch, which is predicted later this year. 

The funding highlights a few important trends: We are noticing a very heated rate of competition in this space right now; games (and mostly casual games) are truly coming into their own when it comes to venture funding and adopting the growth and approach of startups; also perhaps most importantly for this story: investors are extremely keen on getting in on the action.

The news arrives only six months after Dream Games raised $155 million at a $1 billion valuation (which was led by Index and Makers Fund), and 1day after another Istanbul games startup, Spyke, announced a $55 million seed round. 

Dream Games and Spyke have some similarities: They were founded by people that were either founders or senior members of the team at Peak Games, a gaming startup that was acquired by Zynga for 1.8 billion in 2020.

Currently, Royal Match is one of the highest-grossing mobile games in the market. It will be worth watching to see how also if Dream Games follows it up. What the startup has said in the past, and today, those follow-ups may not necessarily reach in the form of more games in quick succession, but in extending the franchises which are successful already and spacing out new developments over periods of years with less stress to make new titles over months.

Visions

“We believe in Pixar’s approach,” co-founder and CEO Soner Aydemir said in an interview in June. “When Pixar started, it was very low frequency, a movie every 2-3 years but eventually the rate increased. And it will be similar for us. This year we need to focus on Royal Match but if we can find a way to create other games, we will.”

As with Spyke’s view that its great competition might be the TikToks of the world, not only other games developers, so also does Dream look up the entertainment industry as a greater competitive threat. That’s not only because they also can publish games and make sticky brands, but they are after the same piece of leisure period as Dream among consumers.

Investors are keen to bet here because of Dream Games’ track record in achieving audience so far.

“The success and growth of Royal Match exceeded all of our expectations,” said Stephane Kurgan, the Index Ventures partner who led the investment, and former chief operating officer at King, in a statement. “In eight months, Royal Match has become one of the most played mobile games of 2021. Dream Games has assembled one of the best teams in the industry, with a rare combination of creative talent, engineering expertise and relentless work ethic. They’ve already shifted the norms around what counts as excellence in mobile gaming, and we’re excited to see where they go next.”

Image Credits: Dream Games

25 thoughts on “A Big Score For Istanbul Gaming Startup: Dream Games Raises $255M At A $2.75B Valuation”
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