Fungies.io recently announced the closure of its Pre-Seed funding round with investments from firms like Depo Ventures, Czechfounders.VC, Necto Labs, CV VC, Outlier Ventures, Tatum, and StartupYard.
The company aims to be what is to gaming as Shopify is to e-commerce. Given that 3.22 billion people worldwide play games, the video games market worldwide, with a growth rate of 7.89% between 2023 and 2027, will reach a market volume of $521.6 billion in 2027. The indie gaming industry in particular is undergoing an overwhelming surge, with over 1,200 games released daily from over 50,000 game developers and publishers. And small game studios, lacking dedicated marketing departments and comprising fewer than ten employees often resort to self-publishing on platforms such as Steam, Epic Games Store, and GOG.com.
Fungies.io was founded to fix this issue. It’s a no-code SaaS platform allowing indie gaming studios to set up their customizable Web Storefront in minutes. And Fungies.io will create self-publishing commerce tools that allow game developers to effortlessly establish their web shops, enabling direct game sales to players without intermediaries like Steam.
Fungies.io is not positioned designed to be a direct competitor to Steam, but rather as an alternative and additional game distribution channel offering unique benefits. And the no-code SaaS platform streamlines the process of setting up Web Shops for studios and publishers, saving them valuable time equivalent to days or weeks. By empowering studios to take control of their distribution and publishing channels, Fungies.io enables them to enhance sales while effectively reducing costs.
One of Fungies.io’s primary goals is to disrupt the burgeoning gaming commerce industry encompassing digital game distribution, in-game transactions, and private game server monetization. And Fungies.io will transform the industry in many ways, primarily:
1.) Giving studios an ability to bypass the hefty commissions (often up to 30%) charged by industry incumbents when selling directly through such Web Shops. Players can conveniently purchase game keys during checkout, enabling studios to maximize their profits by retaining more revenue.
2.) Fungies.io offers extensive customization options, including color schemes, fonts, layouts, and more. By continuously expanding its templates library, Fungies.io facilitates game studios to build their Web Storefronts within minutes, eliminating the weeks typically spent on acquiring hosting services, integrating plugins, and managing payments.
3.) The platform seamlessly integrates with Stripe, providing players with various payment methods, including credit cards and over 250 alternative options for purchasing games or in-game items.
4.) Plus, Fungies.io empowers studios to manage their own communities and access critical customer data, such as email addresses and purchasing behavior. This functionality allows studios with multiple games to consolidate their offerings in one place and effectively upsell new games to their existing player base.
The startup plans integrate with many third-party apps, including Mailchimp, Zapier, Intercom, and numerous marketing tools, thus delivering the ability for studios to more broadly and efficiently market their games directly to players.
Going forward, Fungies.io aims to extend its services to support mobile game studios in selling in-game items, assets, and currencies through their web shops. Notably, some publishers earning over $100 million annually from mobile microtransactions are already experiencing a 10%-20% share of sales through Web Shops, underscoring the immense potential of this market.
While Fungies.io’s team is based in Poland, the company is incorporated in the US with an office in Palo Alto, California. The company will bolster its product team and launch the first version of its platform by the end of September 2023.
Over the next year, Fungies.io aims to onboard 2,000 game developers and publishers via its self-service SaaS platform for gaming commerce, providing them with the ability to establish customizable Web Shops within minutes.
KEY QUOTE:
“We firmly believe that gaming commerce will continue to soar in value in the coming years, given that players already spend hundreds of billions of dollars annually on in-game items and assets, both Web2 and Web3. Our mission is to equip game studios with the essential tools to self-publish directly to their players.”
— Duke Vu, CEO of Fungies.io
