Tilting Point raises $235M for user acquisition for mobile games
That’s a huge round and a vote of confidence for Tilting Point‘s “progressive publishing model,” said co-CEO Kevin Segalla in an interview with GamesBeat. The funds will be used for expansion and acquiring new games, as opposed to directly funding user acquisition.
Tilting Point typically engages with game developers by providing them with user-acquisition budgets. It can borrow up to $132 million per year in its line of credit, and it has used that money to fuel advertising for games from developers who have shown a lot of promise. As the game grows its revenues, it shares the proceeds from the growth. That enables the company to work with developers who are already seeing great growth, rather than trying to pick the winners from a much larger field of small developers.
If the relationship works out well, then Tilting Point can make an investment in the game studio and help it get its next game off the ground. (Sometimes it doesn’t work out, as was the case with Third Time, maker of Photo Finish Horse Racing, an early customer that saw initial success and then slowed down. That firm eventually filed for bankruptcy protection).
But Segalla noted that the company has deep relationships with 40 developers with current campaigns. And eventually, if things progress to the highest level, Tilting Point will sometimes acquire the developers. The company did so with Gondola, Star Trek: Timelines (the game and its developers, from Disruptor Beam), FTX Games, and Plamee.
“We’ve been working really diligently to build a great company,” said Segalla. “We’ve done that bootstrapping the company. We haven’t taken any outside investment up until this investment. And we felt that that now is the right time for us to do that, and really accelerate all the things that we’ve been doing and doing successfully.” Source
