Hypemasters raises $3.25M to make World War Armies mobile RTS game

Mobile game developer Hypemasters has raised $3.25 million to make its mobile real-time strategy game World War Armies.

GEM Capital and The Games Fund (TGF) led the round, with participation from the Turkish VC fund Ludus. About $2 million came from GEM Capital, $1 million came from The Games Fund, and $250,000 came from Ludus.

Hypemasters is a video game developer founded in 2019 by Boris Kalmykov (ex-Facebook and Unity). The company has 34 people. The company’s debut game, World War Armies, is an ambitious competitive multiplayer RTS set during World War II.

The team hopes to reimagine and adapt classic multiplayer gameplay for mobile while preserving and amplifying the essence of the authentic RTS player-vs-player experience.

“This is a breakthrough moment for Hypemasters,” said Boris Kalmykov, Hypemasters cofounder and CEO, in a statement. “Funding from new partners — GEM Capital and Ludus — together with follow-on investment from TGF will help us strengthen the team, launch World War Armies and continue growing beyond a single game.”

He added, “At this point we also part our ways with MGVC and want to thank them for a great kickstart and all the support they provided during our journey. This is a new chapter on a path of an independent global company journey, and we feel privileged to be working with professional gaming VC’s. We look into the future with an excitement and much optimism.”

World War Armies is currently in open beta and scheduled to be released worldwide this summer.
Previously the company raised pre-seed and seed rounds from The Games Fund, MGVC, and AII Corporation. The company will use the money to make World War Armies as well as complete a buyout of earlier investor MGVC.

“We are witnessing Hypemasters evolving from the day one as early investors and happy to continue supporting Boris and the team. I’m absolutely in love with the Hypemasters corporate culture and values,” said Maria Kochmola, managing partner at The Games Fund, in a statement. “That allows them to naturally attract investors and the best talents who want to create groundbreaking games and be proud of their work. In TGF, we are big fans of RTS genre as players and as investors and I see an explosive potential for World War Armies.”

“Hypemasters is a team that is not afraid to experiment and go their own way, not copying other successful games, creating unique products – these are the companies GEM Capital strives to support,” said Roman Gurskiy, games and entertainment leader at GEM Capital, in a statement. “At the moment, there are no popular mobile games on the market that could be called “True RTS”, and we believe that World War Armies can take a leading position in this niche.”

In an email to GamesBeat, Kalmykov said, “Back in 2019, I was simply thinking of starting ‘my own thing.’ It was an urge to create, to lead and to self-manifest that I couldn’t satisfy in any of the jobs I was doing. We started off with small games and a very small team. However, throughout that first year, I have realized that I want to focus Hypemasters on games that define the industry – ambitious, unique and well-executed. Why? Because I love playing unique & well-executed games.”

He added, “My childhood was spent playing Warcraft, Starcraft, C&C Red Alert, Civilization, Total War etc. (really, I played everything and way too much). I desperately wanted to be in that group of creators. Since that realization Hypemasters has embarked on a mission to create legendary & genre-defining games that players all over the world enjoy for years.”

The top three game companies that inspired Kalmykov are Riot Games, Supercell, and Small Giant Games. The team is inspired by many strategy games, with credit to Company of Heroes in particular.

The company has raised $4 million to date. The team comes from diverse backgrounds, including Playrix, Wargaming, My.Games and Game Insight.