Balancy raises $700k from game industry veterans to fuel the growth of its SaaS platform for live operations. The team sets an ambitious goal to transform the way game studios run and monetize live games amid the challenging market.
Seth Sivak, previous VP of Development of World of Warcraft and one of the investors, said in a statement: “Most mobile games today are run as a live service. Studios spend a tremendous amount of resources on the engineering aspects of live operations versus the monetization side, which can bring significant LTV uplift. I am excited to see the unique technology behind Balancy that accelerates live service game development, opens freedom of experimentation, and, as a result, boosts games’ LTV”.
Founded in 2022, this young Cyprus-based startup has already proven its concept by partnering with over 100 titles, including those by industry leaders Lion Studios. Every day, millions of players engage with game events, special offers, and other LiveOps content created and launched via Balancy.
The founders of Balancy, Pavel Ignatov and Andrei Apanasik, met as teenagers while playing World of Warcraft and went together a long way in the industry. After working for many years in big gaming companies, they started their own studio called Unnyhog, which became a YCombinator alumni W16. Now, they’re putting their focus on a new startup, Balancy, with the goal of helping other game developers grow faster.
In 2023, Julia Iljuk joined the team, bringing her gaming SaaS expertise to help launch the platform in the market. Last year, the company saw a 15 times increase in monthly recurring revenue MRR, allowing it to reach the break-even milestone.
Pavel Ignatov, who knows the challenges of running a studio and launching a game firsthand, says in a statement: “We aim to empower promising midsize and smaller studios to navigate the competition amid an increasingly consolidated market and the highest CPI (Cost per Install) numbers in mobile history. By integrating our platform, developers immediately get access to the best practices, frameworks, and tools earlier available only to the industry giants”.
In the past, only the biggest studios with massive engineering teams could execute live operations swiftly and with a deep level of personalization. Today, Balancy levels the playing field—any studio, regardless of size, can scale LiveOps, test new monetization ideas in real-time without lengthy app releases, and generate more revenue from their player base.
The current round has already attracted a pool of notable mobile industry veterans, including Max Kamenkou (CEO & Founder of Splitmetrics), Radostin Petrov (founder of Zariba Group and Casualino), Sergei Kovalenko (CEO & Founder of Vention and Braavo Capital), and Seth Sivak, former VP of Development at World of Warcraft. Balancy is planning to close the fundraising soon and find a lead investor.
This investment round follows a pre-seed round from Andrei Avsievich, who co-founded and invested in a number of early-stage startups later acquired by Pinterest, Farfetch, ServiceNow, and others.
“Investor support propels us toward ambitious roadmap milestones, including innovative ML/AI monetization solutions and expanding the technology across various engines beyond Unity.” – says CEO Pavel Ignatov.
Headquartered in Cyprus, with team members spanning the USA, Lithuania, and Spain, Balancy aims to change the future of monetization in games. The founders invite potential partners to join them on this exciting journey and meet at GDC 2024.