Perion DAO, a Melbourne-based NFT gaming company, has raised $8.6 million ($12 million AUD) in a recent funding round.
Aussie gaming companies are booming
We previously reported on the boom of Australian NFT and gaming startups, and the recent news coming out of Melbourne is only adding fuel to the gaming fire.
Perion DAO, a decentralised autonomous organisation founded by Amos Whitewolf and Mitch Penman-Allen, has recently closed a funding round that saw it raise $12 million AUD in investment from Alameda Research, Framework Ventures, and popular music duo The Chainsmokers. That puts the firm’s valuation at an impressive $84 million AUD, an eye-poppingly high number for a company whose core business did not even exist a year ago. Mr. Whitewolf, the former world number one Axie Infinity player, said the metaverse is a massive untapped economic resource and expects play-to-earn gaming to be the tool to unlocking its economic benefits.
Perion DAO is not the only play-to-earn game flush with cash, though. Alta, an Australian video game studio behind the virtual role-playing game “A Township Tale,” recently pocketed $17.3 million AUD from household names like Makers Fund, Andreessen Horowitz, and Perpetual’s local tech investor Thomas Rice. Its founders, Tima Anoshechkin, Joel van de Vorstenbosch and Boramy Unn, do not expect the boom to end any time soon. Quite the contrary, as Mr. Anoshechkin expects a combination of Federal and State-based incentives to send valuations to new highs:
“Video games are exploding thanks to the government tax offsets. It feels like day and night here. I’ve never seen so many gaming studios growing and so much demand for video game developers.”
Tax breaks result in capital influx into games studios
Behind all this is the Federal government’s announcement of the Digital Games Tax Offset, which will enter into force in July 2022. Video game developers will receive 30% of their costs as a refund, with states like South Australia, New South Wales, and Victoria adding 10% as a developer refund. That kind of help from tax authorities bodes well for funding rounds.
For instance, Mr. Anoshechkin noted that he had been trying to get funding for five years before his game on the Meta-owned Oculus platform turned out to be a success. However, it took him only 72 hours to close the funding round for Alta, which now has over half a million users. The money invested by Andreessen Horowitz and Makers Fund will go into expanding “A Township Tale,” the metaverse-themed game that is Alta’s current flagship product. For now, though, the game will not incorporate NFTs like many other metaverse-themed games:
“Ownership within video games is very cool, and the theme of play-to-earn is very reasonable, but the platforms we sell our game on currently don’t support NFTs, so we won’t build with them now.”
Regardless, Australian gaming companies are flying high right now, following in the footsteps of Illuvium, the game which started the play-to-earn boom Down Under. Expect other hit pieces to generate headlines sooner rather than later.