Tablet-based MOBA Fates Forever nets $8.2M investment

In-development battle arena game Fates Forever has closed out a round of Series A funding with $8.2 million in investment, led by a prominent investor behind Riot Games' League of Legends. A tablet-based MOBA, Fates Forever is in development at Burlingame, CA-based Hammer & Chisel, which was founded by OpenFeint co-creator Jason Citron. It is intended to bring a full MOBA experience to touch devices. "As I was building OpenFeint, I would often look around and wonder why there weren't any fantastic core games to play on my iPad like World of Warcraft or Magic: The Gathering," said Citron, as quoted in VentureBeat. "It seems like a no-brainer." Funding was led by Benchmark Capital's Mitch Lasky, an early investor behind Riot's successful League of Legends. Lasky is expected to join Hammer & Chisel's board to oversee the investment, along with Studio 9+'s Peter Relan, another investor of the round. Other investors include Time Warner, Accel Partners, IDG Capital Partners, and GC Capital Partners. Designed as a high fantasy setting populated by anthropomorphic animals, Fates Forever seeks to take the overhead perspective and lane combat of League of Legends and translate keyboard-specific controls into intuitive touch screen gestures. The game is due to launch in early 2014.