Funcom secures $10.6M to kickstart publishing and co-development ventures

Conan Exiles developer Funcom has secured $10.6 million in funding from Swedbank Robur Fonder to expand into the world of licensing and co-development. 

Swedbank has previously invested in other major game studios and publishers, and wants to give Funcom the financial freedom it needs to produce new games internally and strike up publishing partnerships with third party developers. 

As part of its focus on co-development and publishing, Funcom has also established Heroic Signatures, a new venture that will manage the interactive rights to "rich worlds and characters."

Heroic was created with the help of media financing outfit Cabinet Group LLC, and currently holds the rights to 29 intellectual properties, including some based on the writings of Robert E Howard like Conan the Barbarian, Solomon Kane, and  Mutant Chronicles. 

Cabinet Group will control the overall rights to those properties, with both Cabinet and Funcom each owning 50 percent of Heroic itself.

"Heroic Signatures is now the guardian and caretaker of a veritable treasure chest of incredible worlds, each of them ready to be brought into the interactive space,” said Funcom CEO, Rui Casais. 

"Any developer or publisher will be able to license these properties, and our ambition is to see a multitude of games grow from these worlds and to see the properties strengthened across the board to the benefit of everyone who works with them.