Forge raises $11M to unlock rewards for gamers

Forge, a startup headed by veteran entrepreneurs, has raised $11 million for a platform to connect and reward gamers for their achievements.

The founders include gaming pioneer Dennis “Thresh” Fong, Crunchyroll founder Kun Gao, and Cyence founder George Ng. They have officially launched their beta version of the platform, allowing gamers to start earning rewards based on their gaming profiles.

The funding was led by prominent investors. Makers Fund, Bitkraft Ventures and Animoca Brands led the round. Other participants include Hashkey Capital, Polygon Ventures, Formless Capital and Adaverse.

Forge’s existing investors — carried over from the trio’s previous startup GGWP — include Griffin Gaming Partners, Riot Games, and Sony Innovation Fund. Forge’s angel investors include gaming industry leaders Riot Games founder Marc Merrill, Twitch founders Emmett Shear and Kevin Lin, TSM founder Dan Dinh, Kabam founders Kevin Chou and Holly Liu, YouTube founder Steve Chen, Krafton CEO CH Kim, former Discord CMO Eros Resmini (The Mini Fund), and ESL founder Ralf Reichart.

Origins

Forge was born inside GGWP, a gaming startup that uses AI to stop toxicity in online games. GGWP was started in 2020 by Fong, Gao and Ng. For now, the founders are going to run both companies.

“We actually incubated the idea within GGWP,” Gao said in an interview with GamesBeat. “We were playing around with what would a consumer-facing version of gamer identity and a gamer profile would look like. And as we got more into thinking, and just ideating, we got really excited. But at the same time, we felt that this is also starting to diverge from what the GGWP mission was going to be. And so part of this process for us has has been to make a decision. Do we want to keep ideating and keep trying to see if this thing has legs?”

The leaders consulted with their board and major investors.

“And at the end of day, we just felt like this was compelling enough that we wanted to spin it out as its own separate company. And in fact, our major investors were so excited they basically agreed to co-lead the seed funding for Forge,” Gao said.

Forge’s mission is to empower gamers to unlock the value of their gaming profiles and be recognized for their contributions to gaming communities.

“We wanted to create a platform that finally rewards gamers for being who they are, through their profile and history as a gamer, through their passion, engagement, and community participation,” said Gao. “We feel very strongly that players should be able to control their gaming life. While Forge is just now entering beta, we already have an incredible lineup of dozens of games and partners who are looking to grow with us by giving gamers something special for joining their community.”

How it works

GGWP explored the notion of keeping track of player behavior and whether they were reported for cheating or other problems. While not violating privacy rules, GGWP tracked player accounts and looked at a player’s history. Then it developed reputation scores for the players, and recommended bans for repeat offenders to the operators of online games.

In the case of Forge, players can opt in to share their gaming history, including achievements in games, and get positive rewards for those achievements.

“As we explored more the identity piece, we just realized that all of us as gamers have potentially decades of gameplay locked behind all the different platforms that we’re a part of. But there isn’t really any experience or any platform that rewards the player for all the value they have locked into those profiles,” Gao said. “Community engagement and player engagement and community building are just such an important part of building and launching a game these days. We just felt like there’s something interesting there to explore. And so that’s what really started us on this on this journey.”

Forge is a community platform that rewards gamers for who they are. When a user signs up for Forge, they connect all the various accounts that they have. They authenticate their gaming and social accounts. Then Forge works with game partners to basically curate an experience based on some specific targeting of the users that the game partners are looking for.

“So for example, if you’re building a RPG game, and you’re going to launch the RPG game, you want to find and engage with gamers — maybe that have a lot of gameplay in RPG in the past — and some of those engagement points would follow the socials of the game, start playing the game, download the game, clear certain levels. And then, just for engaging with the game or the community, you start unlocking rewards from the game that you wouldn’t have otherwise had,” Gao said.

Fong in particular has tried to do things like this before with previous startups Plays and Raptr.

“You can probably start connecting the dots. A lot of this stems from our experiences collectively as the founding team,” Gao said.

Forge will have a separate team from GGWP, with separate investors as well. So far, Forge has about 20 people. Forge has been experimenting for a while and it has proven that there is a clear product-market fit, Gao said. Game companies are also more proactive these days at reaching out to gamers to get early feedback on the games that they’re making or launching. Players will be able to control the data that they share, as to whether they share it just with Forge or share it publicly as well or with other companies.

A beta launch

With the beta launch, Forge already boasts an impressive lineup of games and partners who are eager to grow with the platform by offering special incentives to gamers who join their communities.

“We expect Forge to become a critical part of the gaming ecosystem for players and developers alike,” said Andrew Willson, partner at Makers Fund, in a statement. “Developers can offer deeper engagement around their games, and provide rewards systems that benefit gamers and strengthen their relationships with the games they love.”

Upon joining Forge, users can link their various online gaming and social accounts, creating a comprehensive Forge profile that represents their gaming experiences across multiple games. Through the platform’s Season Pass, players can access quests that allow them to earn XP, level up their Season Pass, and unlock exclusive in-game content, virtual currency, cosmetics, item/character unlocks, and even early beta access to select games. Additionally, beta users will have the chance to win weekly bonus rewards, ranging from Amazon gift cards to a brand-new gaming PC.

Carlos Pereira, Partner at Bitkraft Ventures, expressed confidence in Forge’s ability to aggregate gamers’ achievements into a single profile and reward them based on their participation, calling it a “unique flywheel approach.”

Forge has partnered with several games, including Genopets, Mojo Melee, Pixelmon, Portal Fantasy, Rushdown Revolt, and The Sandbox for its launch week.

Each week during the beta period, new games will be added to the platform, allowing them to reach the Forge community and reward their most dedicated players and community members. Game developers interested in joining the Forge platform can sign up here.

“We like Forge because it provides game developers with an authentic way to reach real gamers with an interest in their products,” said Yat Siu, executive chairman of Animoca Brands, in a statement.

With the beta version now open to the public, gamers can sign up at forge.gg and become part of the Forge community. As an added incentive, players who join and actively participate in the community will have the opportunity to receive a limited-edition founders badge, unlocking special features within the Forge community and service.