6waves Lolapps Launches $10M Dev Fund, Talks Mobile Expansion

Today, social game developer and publisher 6waves Lolapps announced a $10 million fund for social and mobile game developers, marking the company's first step toward expanding its business into the mobile market. The newly announced 6L Fund will provide monetary support to social and mobile game developers chosen by the company's internal game review board, and chosen recipients will receive help from 6waves Lolapps in distributing, marketing, localizing, and hosting their game. "The rationale behind the fund is that on the publishing side, we started noticing that given the increased quality level and the production of these kinds of games, it's getting harder for these developers to build them on their own," 6waves Lolapps senior VP of publishing Jim Ying told Gamasutra. While 6waves Lolapps has historically worked primarily in the social space with titles like Ravenwood Fair, Ying said the company is also looking at mobile developers for the fund, since the company hopes to expand into that market. "We've seen a trend that developers are interested in building mobile games, and consumers are looking to play more of these games globally. The reality is that this part of the business is growing significantly, and we believe that we have a lot of knowledge that we can leverage in the space," he said. "Whether we're finding ways to transfer some of our existing users over to that space, or working with developers to bring their games from the social to the mobile side, or just looking to fund outright mobile games from the start, this is definitely something we're going to be pushing further into, and the first big step is this social and mobile fund," he continued, noting that the company will "take other steps on the mobile side" later this year. Prior to merging with 6waves, social developer Lolapps acquired the Flash-based Fliso engine, giving the company some leverage in the tech space in addition to app development. 6waves and Lolapps merged in July, and have since received $35 million in funding, led by Insight Venture Partners.