Fintech company LinQ has raised another $2.3 million in seed money for its plans to tap into the online real-money game industry, taking the total funding to $3.8 million.
Investors include the likes of a16z SPEEDRUN, which led the $1.5 million initial seed round, as well as Drive by DraftKings, Sharp Alpha Advisors and MiddleGame Ventures.
LinQ offers to transition top mobile game publishers into the real-money gaming sector. The platform offers a tech stack and industry expertise with the game of helping game developers enter the RMG market quickly, securely and at scale. It publishes companies’ titles while handling all compliance, operations, geolocation and native payments processes across multiple jurisdictions, and says it can bring developers’ games to market in as little as four weeks.
“We see first-hand the challenges casual gaming studios face as they search for new monetization streams amidst rising acquisition costs in mobile gaming, however the real money gaming sector comes rife with nuanced regulatory and technical complexities,” added Drive by DraftKings Managing Partner Meredith McPherron.
“LinQ’s platform solves these challenges allowing studios to efficiently tap into this rapidly growing sector offering a massive opportunity for studios to cross-sell existing, large free-to-play customer bases.”
The platform is already live in the U.S. gaming market as well as numerous European jurisdictions, totaling 12 countries in all. It has formed strategic partnerships with the likes of Mamboo/My.Games and Azur Games, the latter of which entered the RMG space last month with Azur iGaming.
RMG sector continues to grow
LinQ notes the global online RMG market was valued at $13 billion in 2023 and is projected to reach $40 billion by 2028. The company’s co-founders describe the sector as the area of the gaming industry with the most growth potential in the coming years.
“Mobile gaming faces challenges, with many once-successful games struggling to maintain net-positive unit economics. While RMG stands out as the only growing category, there is currently no other working solution for top game developers to enter it quickly, except LinQ. We can provide all the tools and the legal support they require,” said Kevin Cubitt, co-founder at LinQ.
“Our mission is to enable real-life economies in games — with money, assets, transactions, and marketplaces. We believe that our infrastructure offers the building blocks for a new wave that could be even bigger than free-to-play,” added Cubitt’s fellow co-founder Dmitry Vysotski.
