Video game platform based in Barcelona Games has snatched $ 5 million in seed funds, led by Goodwater Capital, Target Global, and Kibo Ventures, driving investors wild with a 175-fold growth rate in the last 12 months.
While the Spanish-language gaming video platform (for now) launched a few years ago, in 2018, last year, the founders decided to move away from an early focus on curating purely learning content around games, allowing creators upload and share entertainment-centric content. game videos, too.
The change appears to have paid off as a growth tactic. Gamestry says it now has 4 million active monthly users (MAUs) and 2,000 active creators in Spain and Latin America (its main markets so far), and is preparing to hit 20 million MAUs by the end of the year.
While Twitch continues to dominate the live streaming gaming market, catering to the boom in esports, Gamestry, which says it focuses on “non-live video content,” acknowledges that there is a gap for a low video platform. Dedicated demand that better support games. focused video creators and gives game fans a more streamlined discovery experience than user-generated content giants like YouTube.
For video game creators, it’s hanging the carrot of a better revenue share than other UGC video platforms: Talk about having “a fair ad revenue sharing model” and a plan to add more revenue streams. for creators “soon”. It also promises “full transparency on how the monetization structure works” and a focus on supporting creators if they have technical problems.
So basically the kind of problems that creators have often complained about is that YouTube fails them.
For viewers, the field is a one-stop shop for finding and watching video about games and connecting with others with the same passion (game chat), which is why the platform structures content around individual game titles.
The startup also aims to present viewers with better information about a video to help them decide whether or not to click on it (aka tools to help them find “quality instead of clickbait”), beyond the basics like the title. , the thumbnail and the videos. (Although to my undoubtedly inexperienced eye at assessing the caliber of video content in games, there is no shortage of clickbaity-like material on Gamestry. But I’m definitely not the target audience here …). So the viewer’s speech also sounds like another little YouTube dig.
“Despite being the de facto place to upload content, YouTube is a generic platform that is not optimized for games and therefore does not meet the needs of game creators,” argue the founders, brothers Alejo and Guillermo Torrens, and added: “Vertical or specialized platforms emerge when markets become large enough that current platforms cannot meet the needs of their users and we believe that is exactly what is happening today. “
Target Global’s Lina Chong led the international fund’s investment in Games. When asked what sparked his interest here, he pointed to the recent accelerated growth and the platform has onboarding dozens of highly engaged game content creators in a short time.
“The problem that Gamestry addresses is that the vast majority of creators don’t make a lot of money on those platforms because they are ad-driven / eyeball-driven businesses,” he told TechCrunch. “Gamestry offers a space where creators, despite the size of the audience, can find new ways to interact with their audience and make a living. This problem among creators is so great that Gamestry now has more than 2000 highly engaged creators who they upload multiple pieces of content and millions of their viewers to the platform every month. “
Surely no one will be surprised to learn that the typical Gamestry user is a male, between the ages of 18 and 24.
The startup also told us that the “most popular” games on its platform are Minecraft, Free Fire, and Fortnite, adding that “IRL (In Real Life) content is also very successful.”
Besides YouTube Gaming, other platforms competing for crazy eyes for similar games include Facebook Gaming and Booyah.
