Multiverse raises $4M for virtual world offering

May 31, 2007 | Matt Marshall | Comments |

multiverse.jpgMultiverse, a Mountain View, Calif. company that provides a tool-kit for develops to build multiplayer online games and virtual worlds and then make money off them if they want, said it has raised $4.175 million in a first round of funding.

The company is co-founded by Bill Turpin, a Web pioneer whose first company helped create the beginnings of what later became JavaScript, and an HTML Web page creator that was built into the early Netscape browser (clarification: Turpin’s Livewire, which Netscape renamed Javascript, became the script for the server side; Brendan Eich was actually responsible for creating Javascript on the client side, based on idea by Andreessen).

You can download its client at Multiverse, and test it out. We did, and it certainly looks state-of-the-art.

The company says more than 10,000 development teams have already signed up to use the Multiverse platform, and over 150 teams have begun building products ranging from fantasy and science fiction MMOGs to educational worlds. It plans to launch a consumer network of games later this year or early next year.

If a developer doesn’t want to charge consumers or run ads in their world, they don’t pay Multiverse anything, though the world does have to be part of the Multiverse Network to be opened to consumers. If a developer wants to use the platform commercially, Multiverse offers them two options: revenue-sharing or up-front payment.

Sterling Stamos Capital Management, a hedge fund, led the round, which included angel investors.

Multiverse had a post-money valuation of $10.5 million, according to VentureWire.

Next Story: Ception Therapeutics raises additional $15M for anti-inflammatories
Previous Story: WaveTec Vision Systems takes in $13M for intraocular lens replacement

Bookmark and Share

Tags: , ,

Photo of Matt Marshall

About the Author, Matt Marshall

Matt Marshall is editor and CEO of VentureBeat. Follow him on Twitter at @mmarshall, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

  • BobW
    Your second link to Multiverse is wrong. First is OK.

    Bob
  • jessey
    This multiverse thing uses one of the worste business models ever. They are basically relying on hobbyists and amateur start-ups to develop some of the most complex games imagineable.

    Whoever approved 4 million in funding for Multiverse needs to have their business sense
    seriously examined.

    A LOT of caution is warranted with Multiverse.

    This whole thing could have taken place in 1990 as this happened
    in MMOs before, around 1990 when the text codebases like DIKU
    started coming out. Did it allow many people to make text based MMOs? Sure.
    There are about 1,500 text based MMO's running on a primarily text interface.
    98% of them have about 5 players and are nearly identical to each other.

    To run worlds of the size that the average hobbyist will attract, you don't need anything more than the Neverwinter Nights toolset really.
    I can't say I see how academics, for instance, will particularly benefit from Multiverse.
    If you just want a cheap way to create a virtual world to study, text has been available for a decade and a half.
    Yes you won't get many users, but then, you're not going to get many users with a nearly budget-less graphical MMO which are the only things that will be developed using Multiverse,
    and you'll have far less content and far less depth due to the cost of producing the models/textures/animations.
    Far less ability to actually produce something interesting.

    The odds of any hobbyist developer ever producing a MMOG using multiverse that would make it to market and get published are slim to none.
    The odds of a professional developer using multiverse to develop a MMOG are 100% zero.