Lightforge—an all-remote video game studio founded by Epic Games and Blizzard Entertainment veterans—today announced a $15M Series A to double down on their mission of innovating shared storytelling, user-generated content creation, and social gameplay. The round was led by BITKRAFT Ventures, with Galaxy Interactive, NetEase and Dune Ventures participating in the round.

Existing investors Dreamhaven and 1Up Ventures were also joined by over 50 industry-leading angels, including Imane “Pokimane” Anys and her influencer agency RTS; Epyllion CEO Matthew Ball; Geek & Sundry Co-Founder and former CEO Sheri Bryant; Twitch Co-Founder Kevin Lin; Oculus Co-Founder Nate Mitchell; Kabam Co-Founder Holly Liu; Sandbox Co-Founder and COO Sebastian Borget; Yield Guild Games Co-Founder and CEO Gabby Dizon; Super Evil Megacorp CEO Kristian Segerstrale; Polygon Studios CEO Ryan Wyatt; former professional gamer Dennis “Thresh” Fong; and Arcane: League of Legends Producer Thomas Vu.

Lightforge Games was founded in 2020 and currently stands at eighteen developers and growing. The team brings decades of experience from Epic, Blizzard, Riot, Bioware, Respawn, and Zenimax Online and has shipped top games such as Fortnite, World of Warcraft, Diablo 3, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Hearthstone, StarCraft 2, Overwatch, Elder Scrolls Online, and more. The studio is all-remote, has embraced an open salary policy, and is looking for passionate developers excited about building an incredible platform for shared storytelling. 

“Games are at their best when they create a shared experience,” CEO Matt Schembari said. “Our team is building a game that looks to push the boundaries of the stories and worlds players can create together. In raising this round of funding, and doing so with an amazing set of partners, we’ll be able to continue to expand the team to meet our ambitious goals.”

“The Lightforge team’s credentials speak for themselves, but their vision really came to life for us when we had a chance to look behind the scenes and see the amazing progress that the team had made in such a short time,” said Moritz Baier-Lentz, partner at BITKRAFT Ventures. “It’s already an incredibly fun and captivating experience, and I’m not surprised that this group of  exceptional founders and executives across gaming, streaming, and interactive media is rallying behind the Lightforge team to take them to the next level, and cheer them on as they continue to push the boundaries and perception of video games.”

Lightforge Games is working on an unannounced title that combines the creative elements of games like Minecraft or Roblox with the open-ended storytelling of tabletop RPGs. The game is being built using Epic Games’ cutting-edge Unreal Engine 5 technology.

Lightforge is hiring across many different roles and disciplines. To learn more about the studio and to check out open roles, visit lightforge.gg and follow Lightforge on Twitter @LightforgeGames.

‍About BITKRAFT Ventures

‍BITKRAFT Ventures is a leading investment platform for gaming and Web3 globally, and has been the most active gaming venture capital firm and lead investor in 2020 and 2021, according to research from InvestGame and Drake Star Partners. Founded by industry pioneer Jens Hilgers, BITKRAFT serves a worldwide network that spans many of the industry’s forward-thinking startups and founders—including former executives from the likes of Activision Blizzard, Riot Games, Epic Games, Google, and Apple who are working to build and operate the virtual worlds and economies of the future. BITKRAFT operates five venture funds with a total of over $570M in assets under management and has over 80 companies in its global portfolio as of January 2022.

BITKRAFT’s experienced international team works closely with exceptional entrepreneurs to create significant value through early candid partnerships, unique domain experience, entrepreneurial history, and a global ecosystem of strategic partners.
Find out more about how BITKRAFT and its portfolio companies are pushing the boundaries of Synthetic Reality® by visiting https://www.bitkraft.vc/vision.