Future Trash, a multidisciplinary creative studio, announced that it has raised $5 million in venture capital funding, led by TIRTA and General Catalyst. The funding round will be dedicated to Future Trash’s flagship original IP, FOAD. FOAD leverages Fortnite’s Unreal Editor (UEFN) tools and ecosystem to create a User-Generated Content (UGC) native video game franchise.
Even though the AAA gaming market faces challenges, there is a significant shift in the games industry with the rise of UGC gaming platforms such as Roblox and UEFN. Solo or small teams of developers can reach massive audiences quickly and require very little capital to ship full games. And with UEFN still in its early stages, FOAD plans to incubate brand awareness for their original IP through a network of games. Having already crossed a significant milestone of 20M unique players and 1B minutes of playtime, the FOAD universe has begun to take shape.
Founded by Kevin Marciano, Nate Reese, Scott Ulliman, and Sebastian Alberini in late 2022, the team’s background spans many gaming and interactive media verticals. Future Trash was quickly recognized as one of the most innovative teams building on the platform with genre-defining experiences. This earned them a nomination at Geoff Keighley’s The Game Awards. Epic has profiled FOAD on the official Unreal Engine YouTube page and other socials to showcase the power of UEFN.
With the recent funding, FOAD plans to accelerate its production pipeline and release over 15 games over the next year across multiple genres and popular game types in Fortnite.
KEY QUOTES:
“We believe Fortnite is the future of original IP development. The numbers we are able to achieve on the platform are truly staggering. Epic has democratized game development and distribution in a way that is extremely liberating for a small developer studio like ours. We can build, test, learn, and iterate faster than ever before, and this new funding will accelerate everything even further. Fortnite is already a melting pot of the world’s most iconic IP, seamlessly overlapping with ours. We are relentlessly committed to our unique world and characters that serve as the connective tissue between all our games. There is a strong brand identity with every experience we craft. FOAD is more than just any single game. FOAD is a community and a lifestyle brand, both inside Fortnite and beyond.“
-Kevin Marciano, Co-founder and CEO
“Future Trash is a passionate creative development team that has significantly impacted the UEFN ecosystem. Using UEFN’s sophisticated development tools to create and distribute content in weeks or months rather than years, Future Trash iterates rapidly on creative ideas to build new entertainment franchises for gamers around the world.”
-Ben Feder, Managing Partner at TIRTA
“We were inspired by what we believe is Kevin and the team’s unique vision within the UEFN ecosystem. The way they’re building community and raising awareness not only within the Fortnite ecosystem, but around their own characters and IP has been great to see. We view this as an opportunity to really stand out in the early days of the platform.”
-Jonny Zhang, Investor at General Catalyst
