Photo Credit: WarDucks
WarDucks, an Ireland-based augmented reality company, announced it raised $3.8 million in funding, according to VentureBeat. This round of funding came from EQT Ventures. Suir Valley Ventures and several other investors also participated in this round.
WarDucks also announced it brought in some high-end talent to grow its augmented reality studio. For example, Doom and Quake co-creator John Romero to work on game design and serve as creative consultant on a location-based augmented reality game. Douglas Kaufman — one of the designers behind Civilization II and Frontierville — was hired as the lead designer at WarDucks. Plus Lawrence Schick is serving as the narrative lead — who is known as one of the first professional designers hired for Dungeons & Dragons back in 1979.
Nikki Lannen, the CEO and founder of WarDucks, used to be a senior member of Facebook’s gaming team. Lannen launched WarDucks in 2013 with a goal of building high-quality content for mobile devices and VR platforms. This has been a successful venture as WarDucks has created 6 best selling VR apps and create 2 top 10 games on PlayStation VR.
“There’s a huge opportunity in AR location-based mobile gaming, which combines the local appeal of real world maps with engaging gameplay,” said Lannen in a statement. “We’re thrilled to be partnering with EQT Ventures as we race towards the launch of our location-based AR game as the team’s extensive mobile gaming experience will be invaluable on the next phase of our journey. The fact that we’ve also had so many top gaming executives from around the world join our team is testament to the talent and vision of the team we’ve currently got in place.”
With this funding round, WarDucks will be developing the new location-based and the company is expanding the company’s development team. Interestingly, WarDucks was the latest investment to be discovered by the Motherbrain AI platform, which is used by EQT Ventures to identify and contact upcoming startups.
“WarDucks is a strong, proven games studio with an impressive team of passionate game experts ready to take on this rapidly growing genre of mobile gaming,” added EQT Ventures partner Lars Jörnow. “We believe that WarDucks’ next title will engage players all over the world and become a popular franchise. The EQT Ventures team is excited to partner with Nikki and the team on this journey with our in-house gaming expertise.”
