Pragma Raises $22M, Bolsters Team to Fuel Technology and Support Launch of Backend Game Engine

Pragma Raises $22M, Bolsters Team to Fuel Technology and Support Launch of Backend Game Engine

Pragma Raises $22M, Bolsters Team to Fuel Technology and Support Launch of Backend Game Engine

Eden

As the gaming industry continues to rapidly expand, there are several trends that make it increasingly difficult to build games. The tools to support platform features are nascent and the competition for platform engineers is at an all-time high. Player expectations—such as the ability to play anywhere with friends, or an ever-increasing appetite for frequent, high-quality content updates—have also contributed to an increase in development complexity. 

We set out with the ambitious mission to build the world’s most scalable and extensible backend for games, allowing studios to focus on the creation of the game. I’m excited to share updates on the progress that we’ve made around our team, the product, and new partners.

We’re excited to welcome new investors

Today, I’m thrilled to announce that Pragma has raised a $22 million Series B funding round led by New York-based global private equity and venture capital firm Insight Partners, with participation from our existing investors Greylock Partners, Upfront Ventures, and Advancit Capital, and new investors Daher Capital, Overwolf, Kevin Lin (Twitch), and Ted Gill (Unknown Worlds). Nikhil Sachdev, Managing Director at Insight Partners, has joined Pragma’s board. We’re fortunate to have some of the best minds in gaming, enterprise, and venture capital support us, and this capital will allow us to accelerate hiring and expand our product to more studios. 

“Pragma’s industry-leading software platform provides gaming studios of all types with the backend infrastructure to build multiplayer live services games. Pragma is quickly emerging as a leading infrastructure platform in the Games-as-a-Service industry, which we expect to grow as games become more immersive, networked and engaging. Insight couldn’t be more thrilled to partner with Eden and Chris and their brilliant team in this exciting next chapter for Pragma.”

-Nikhil Sachdev, Managing Director at Insight Partners

What we’ve been building at Pragma

We’ve rapidly expanded our feature set to include all of the core features needed to ship a live service game. This includes content management and player data with versioning and migration features, full game loop services like lobby, invites, game modes, matchmaking, and game server management, as well as our cross-platform accounts system that is integrated with the major platforms. We’re finalizing our data pipelines for metrics and telemetry, as well as built-in instrumentation for live ops, observability, and related elements.

Our upcoming release is designed to support more than one million concurrent players, built by our team who has helped scale the largest games in the world. It includes a built-in web portal with CMS and other management features, a fully functioning demo game shipped along with the product that serves as a canonical example of integration patterns, plugins, and custom services. Our upcoming roadmap will build on this strong foundation. This includes rich social features such as cross-platform social, friends, guilds, and factions. Innovating in this area will help us work towards our mission of enabling healthy online communities.

We’re partnering with the world’s best studios

We’re also thrilled to announce more world-class studios that we’ll be powering including Frost Giant Studios and Lightforge Games.

 "By leveraging Pragma's platform, Frost Giant is free to focus on building a great game, while still providing players top notch network features and performance." - Tim Morten, CEO at Frost Giant Studios

“Using Pragma derisks our game and allows us to focus on what we're best at. They've assembled an amazing team of platform engineers who have built an online engine that gives us the extensibility and scalability we need while keeping integration simple.” -Matt Schembari, CEO at Lightforge Games

We’re lucky to be attracting and building a world-class team

In order to achieve our mission of supporting healthy and vibrant online communities, we must create a healthy and vibrant workplace. We’ve written a bit more about our culture on our blog and in an interview with Games Industry. This has allowed us to attract unique and accomplished individuals in gaming and enterprise software.

What’s next

It’s hard to believe all that has happened in the last two years since we started. Notably, a global pandemic drove us into isolation, with many seeking refuge and solace in games. As people grapple with the impacts of quarantine and the pandemic, the gaming industry has faced a reckoning for toxic and inequitable workplaces that failed to prioritize the health and happiness of employees.

We believe that the games are a place where people should experience strong community and connection. We’ve just scratched the surface on supporting this goal—features that not only unlock game studios but enable them to create healthy and vibrant communities.

As we prepare for our next growth phase, we are opening up new positions as we expand our product and services. If you’re interested in what we’re working on, please see our open roles at pragma.gg/careers. We’re a remote company with team members currently in 7 cities and 3 countries.

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Contact Us

Pragma is currently working with a select group of studios in development.

A great underlying platform is essential in bringing players together. Pragma's technology lets us focus on the creative side of game development while offloading much of the complexity of shipping at scale.

Nate Mitchell

Founder of Mountaintop Studios and Oculus