Finnish mobile game developer Critical Force has raised $6.3 million (5.45M€) funding from a Finnish public grant organization Business Finland. Critical Ops developer will use these funds to scale their game to be the world’s leading mobile esports FPS franchise. Critical Ops has now over 40 million downloads.
The funding will contribute to the emergence and operation of the global Critical Ops esports ecosystem. This offers new value and business opportunities for the existing international esports market. The funding will also be used to develop and deploy a scalable and automated production platform designed to speed up the development and testing of Critical Force’s games. Analytics tools will also be built to support data-analysis of the games to support decision making. In addition to these, a game server software is also in the pipeline with a new game required to test the server software.
Critical Ops reached a major milestone by getting its 40th million download without an official release version of the game. Steady growth pre-release still means that Critical Ops is now one of the most played mobile FPS games in the market. Official 1.0 release will be released in the near future.
“With the new funding we are happy to have the opportunity to really show our hands regarding our status as the number one developer of mobile esports FPS games. The news of the funding coincided beautifully with us reaching 40 million downloads as well as our very first Critical Ops live tournament in Seattle with $40.000 prize pool” says Critical Force CEO Veli-Pekka Piirainen.
More information
www.criticalforce.fi
http://bit.ly/2k6o32v (images and videos)
https://youtu.be/U6U1XwvMmhs (Critical Ops trailer)
Critical Force
Critical Force is a game developer from Finland focusing on competitive multiplayer games for mobile. The company’s first game is a mobile FPS title Critical Ops. It has been downloaded over 40 million times and over one million people play this pioneering mobile esports game every day. The company received a $4.5 million seed investment from Korean game publisher conglomerate NHN Entertainment in 2016. Critical Force has offices in Finland and South Korea. Critical Force was also awarded the best Finnish game developer of 2016.
Business Finland
Business Finland creates new growth by supporting companies to go global, as well as funding innovations. Business Finland’s top experts speed up the identification of business opportunities around the world and help transform them into global success stories. Business Finland was formed recently through the merger of Tekes and Finpro.