Social Game Developer Tiny Speck Raises $10.7 Million

Tiny Speck (Glitch), the social game start-up formed by Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield, announced that it's raised $10.7 million in a Series B round of financing led by existing backers Andreessen Horowitz and Accel. The company says this new funding will accelerate development on Glitch, enable it to continue building the technology infrastructure powering the game world, and help it build services to support the online title's growing player base. Tiny Speck is also looking to expand its staff, and is hiring independent mobile game developers. Glitch is a massively multiplayer, browser-based online game in which players learn skills to build and shape an "enormous, ever-changing, persistent world." The free-to-play 2D title is currently in its Alpha testing state, but Tiny Speck will launch its Beta period next week. The company expects to launch Glitch some time this spring. Butterfield, who serves as president for the San Francisco-based start-up (with an office in Vancouver), formed Tiny Speck along with five Flickr veterans and other developers several years ago to work on Glitch. The firm previously received $5 million in a Series A round in 2010, and $1.5 million seed funding in the year prior. "In short, things are going swimmingly, and we're excited to be taking the next step toward public release," sad Butterfield in a blog post today. "Being in beta will in no way mean an end to new feature development... We've got a backlog a mile long we'll be choosing from judiciously, and there are many things coming down the way!"