Helsinki-based Noice, a next-gen live streaming platform for gamers, announced that it has secured $21M (approximately €19.64M) in a Series A round of funding.
The company says, “We’ve been building Noice in stealth for over 4.5 years. Today that incredibly long stealth mode is finally over and we are revealing for the first time that Noice is a Multiplayer Game X Livestreaming platform.”
Noice plans to use the funds to boost its platform promotion and expand its team.
Investors supporting Noice
The company claims it has raised funding from influential entrepreneurs associated with the success stories of Unity, Supercell, and Wolt.
Among the notable backers are Mikko Kodisoja (Supercell), Ilkka Paananen (Supercell), Miki Kuusi (Wolt) and Riku Mäkelä (Wolt).
The funding round also saw participation from seasoned investors such as Sedona Holdings (led by Bret Terrill), Team Builder Ventures (led by Steven Lurie), Bitkraft (led by Jens Hilgers) and F4 Fund (led by David Kaye).
A gaming and live-streaming platform
Noice originated from brainstorming in March 2019 and was officially incorporated in August 2020, as reported by VentureBeat. In the summer of that year, during the naming process, a serendipitous misspelling turned “noise” into “noice”, a twist that resonated well with people.
Jussi Laakkonen, former EVP at Unity and co-founder of Applifier, has invested in and incubated Noice with funds from selling Applifier to Unity in 2014. The founders also include Jenni Wilson, a seasoned lead game developer, and Jaakko Lukkari, CTO and former principal software engineer at Unity’s Operate division.
Noice is a multiplayer game and livestreaming platform that integrates viewers into gameplay as active participants. The closed beta, starting this month, will unveil the innovative approach.
“A community that plays together stays together. On Noice, your community is now playing with you as they watch your stream, engaging with your epic gaming moments and forming teams to co-op and compete,” says the company.
“Your channel comes alive as a multiplayer game that keeps your fans coming back for more and more. On Noice, higher engagement and retention meets revolutionary new ways for your fans to financially support you as a creator,” adds Noice.
Noice adopts a remote-first work culture with a global team of 70 individuals spanning Finland, the UK, the US, Ireland, Denmark, Italy, Croatia, Hungary, and South Africa.
While Helsinki serves as the core with 50 team members, approximately 25 per cent of the team has a background with Applifier, from its startup phase through the post-acquisition period at Unity.
“We’re building a WIN for game developers”
Noice emphasises the power of content creators in driving game discovery. The platform enhances player engagement by allowing users to play alongside their favourite creators, learning and immersing themselves in the game before installation.
This dynamic interaction promotes deeper engagement, strategy sharing, and longevity for games on Noice. According to the company, it positions itself as the place where players can fall in love with new games.
“Noice is building WIN-WIN-WIN for gamers, creators and developers, because we know how incredibly powerful positive sum, open ecosystems are in gaming.”
The company established Applifier’s robust cross-promotion network, facilitating daily player exchanges exceeding 500,000 users for Facebook game developers.
Additionally, Noice pioneered Everyplay, a replay-sharing platform across 5,000 integrated mobile games. Joining forces with Unity in 2014, the company introduced rewarded video ads, scaling Unity Ads to support 100,000+ games, providing crucial revenue and users for mobile games.”
“We saw first-hand inside Unity during those formative years of mobile gaming how powerful the idea of democratising game development was,” says Noice.
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