Former heads of Riot Games, Peak Games and Zynga have raised $55 million to develop casual games in Turkey
Spyke Games is a Turkish mobile studio that was opened two years ago by former top managers of Riot Games, Peak Games and Zynga. Yesterday, it held the largest seed round of financing in the history of the country’s gaming industry.
As part of the round, the company raised $55 million. For comparison, one of the most famous game studios in Turkey, Peak Games, has managed to attract three times less — $18 million (before it was bought by Zynga for $1.8 billion).
The money came from one investor. It became the Griffin Gaming Partners Foundation. It should be noted that its managing director Phil Sanderson joined the board of directors of Spyke Games as a result of the transaction.
In part, the large size of the deal is due to the strong composition of the founders of the studio. Spyke Games launched:
- Rina Onur Sirinoglu — Co-founder and former Product Director of Peak Games;
- Remi Onur — former Head of Design at Peak Games;
- Fuat Coşkun — former Technical Director of Peak Games;
- Barkin Basaran is a former senior product manager first at Peak Games and then at Zynga;
- Mithat Madra is a former executive director of Riot Games.
In addition, Spyke Games has quite serious ambitions. According to Onur Sirinoglu, CEO of the studio, she plans to turn Spyke Games into one of the largest gaming companies in the world “as soon as possible”.
The Turkish studio is going to develop “eternal franchises”. Spyke Games did not explain what it means by them, but we note that the same term is used by Zynga — the company calls games that have been successful for five years. As for the genre, Spyke Games intends to focus on casual games, which will add more social elements.
“We will compete not only with the world of other casual games, but also with companies like TikTok,” Onur Sirinoglu said, probably alluding to TikTok’s gaming initiatives. Recall that last November TikTok launched its own game service, The Game Room.
In an interview with TechCrunch, Onur Sirinoglu explained that she was convinced of the potential of social casual games when she worked at Peak Games. According to her, the studio almost “accidentally” added social elements to titles like Toy Blast and Toon Blast, but it only benefited them. Peak Games began to receive most of its revenue from the sale of virtual items in player chats. In addition, Toy Blast and Toon Blast have formed a strong user community.
Now Spyke Games has one game on its account — Royal Riches. So far, it is available to gamers only from some countries (among them there is Russia), and the full release of the title should take place closer to the end of the month. The money received from investors will be used, among other things, for the development of this project.
It should be noted that in recent years, gaming startups from Turkey are increasingly interested in investors. According to Startups Watch, in 2021 they received investments for a record amount of $ 400 million.
