Playfish Grabs $17 Million For Social Network Games

Casual games developer Playfish secured $17 million in a Series B round of funding led by Accel Partners and Index Ventures. The studio also announced that Accel Partners' Kevin Comolli and Index Ventures' Ben Holmes will both join its board of directors. Based in London and founded in October 2007, Playfish releases "social games," such as Who Has The Biggest Brain? and Bowling Buddies, on social networks like Facebook and MySpace. The company intends to use the new financing to further establish itself in the social gaming sector. So far, the studio's games have picked up over 10 million monthly active users, with players spending two billion monthly minutes on its titles. Playfish's funding comes not long after rival Social Gaming Network (Warbook) raised $15 million for its own social network games, which was followed by Zynga (YoVille) picking up $29 million in VC funding for the same shortly afterwards. "This has proven to be an outstanding year for the Playfish team," says Playfish CEO Kristian Segerstrale, CEO of Playfish. "We've opened offices in San Francisco, Beijing and Norway and have now closed a round of funding with two great investors, Accel Partners and Index Ventures. We look forward to expanding our studios, growing our user base and continuing to develop new ways for people to play games together."