Pokèmon Go creator Niantic has acquired a small sci-fi game startup that builds a platform for organizing leagues and tournaments to help players build their communities around popular titles.
Mayhem was in Y Combinator's 2018 winter lot and raised $ 5.7 million in funding according to Crunchbase. Other backers include Accel, who led the startup's Series A in 2018, Afore Capital and NextGen Venture Partners.
The startup's focus shifted quite a bit from its initial YC debut, when it announced a service called Visor that would analyze esports gameplay videos and educate users on how to improve their performance. The company appears to have shifted its focus entirely to community tools to help players find matches and organize tournaments for games like Overwatch on its platform.
Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed by Niantic .
The "majority" of the Mayhem team will join Niantic with startup CEO Ivan Zhou joining the company's Social Platform Product team, while the rest of the team will join Platform Engineering.
In a statement, Niantic says the acquisition "strengthens our commitment to real-world social media as the core of our mission."
Most of Niantic's acquisitions in recent times have focused on augmented reality backend technologies, so it's interesting to see them buy technology that focuses on community organization.
Pokèmon Go continues to be Niantic's money cow even though the company hasn't seen the same levels of viral success with later releases where organic growth hasn't been that easy to achieve. The purchase of a startup creating tools for the community suggests that the company is ready to bring in some external technology to further their efforts as they strive to create a broader platform for their AR ambitions and more success autonomous.
Source link