In its recent Series A funding round, the women-first game platform Dorian has raised $14 million to expand its cloud-based creation tools and livestreaming support.
Led by The Raine Group, participants in the round also included March Gaming, London Venture Partners, VGames, Gaingels, and Graham & Walker.
Dorian’s platform has been designed for creators, streamers and players, and is the first of its type to have been formed and led by a woman, built with women in mind. Julia Palatovska is the company’s co-founder and CEO, a native Ukrainian.
The platform has more than 3,500 interactive games and a nearly all-female creator community, enabling women to form direct relationships with fans and make money in a fast-growing game format.
There are more than 250 creators on Dorian and since monetisation was enabled on the platform, some creators have been earning upwards of $15,000 in annualised revenue.
“The expression of creative energy on our platform in the last twelve months has been incredible,” said Palatovska.
“We moved quickly to foster new talent by giving them the tools to turn fiction into games, host interactive social livestreams and become better at their craft based on feedback from players and advanced data insights.”
New platform options
A new feature was recently announced on Dorian that allows authors of games to collect a share of the revenue when their games are streamed by others on the platform. There are also plans to launch an art marketplace.
Raine partner Todd Rosoff added: “We couldn’t be more excited by Julia and the team’s vision for the company. In Dorian, we see an innovative creator platform focused on the large and fast-growing market for fan fiction, a platform that harnesses the power of user-generated content and gaming to enable creators to bring their stories to life for fans everywhere.”
In order to expand the platform, Dorian is looking to enter partnerships with owners of established IPs. Rosoff is also joining Dorian’s Board of Directors.
Stardew Valley creator Eric Barone recently revealed that he will be self-publishing the game on Android devices, having taken control of publishing operations of the game across all platforms.
