Forge raises $11M to unlock rewards for gamers

18.10.2023 - 18:55 / venturebeat.com / Marc Merrill / Emmett Shear

Forge, a startup headed by veteran entrepreneurs, has raised $11 million for a platform to connect and reward gamers for their achievements.

The founders include gaming pioneer Dennis “Thresh” Fong, Crunchyroll founder Kun Gao, and Cyence founder George Ng. They have officially launched their beta version of the platform, allowing gamers to start earning rewards based on their gaming profiles.

The funding was led by prominent investors. Makers Fund, Bitkraft Ventures and Animoca Brands led the round. Other participants include Hashkey Capital, Polygon Ventures, Formless Capital and Adaverse.

Forge’s existing investors — carried over from the trio’s previous startup GGWP — include Griffin Gaming Partners, Riot Games, and Sony Innovation Fund. Forge’s angel investors include gaming industry leaders Riot Games founder Marc Merrill, Twitch founders Emmett Shear and Kevin Lin, TSM founder Dan Dinh, Kabam founders Kevin Chou and Holly Liu, YouTube founder Steve Chen, Krafton CEO CH Kim, former Discord CMO Eros Resmini (The Mini Fund), and ESL founder Ralf Reichart.

GamesBeat Next 2023

Join the GamesBeat community in San Francisco this October 23-24. You’ll hear from the brightest minds within the gaming industry on latest developments and their take on the future of gaming.

Forge was born inside GGWP, a gaming startup that uses AI to stop toxicity in online games. GGWP was started in 2020 by Fong, Gao and Ng. For now, the founders are going to run both companies.

“We actually incubated the idea within GGWP,” Gao said in an interview with GamesBeat. “We were playing around with what would a consumer-facing version of gamer identity and a gamer profile would look like. And as we got more into thinking, and just ideating, we got really excited. But at the same time, we felt that this is also starting to diverge from what the GGWP mission was going to be. And so part of this process for us has has been to make a decision. Do we want to keep ideating and keep trying to see if this thing has legs?”

The leaders consulted with their board and major investors.

“And at the end of day, we just felt like this was compelling enough that we wanted to spin it out as its own separate company. And in fact, our major investors were so excited they basically agreed to co-lead the seed funding for Forge,” Gao said.

Forge’s mission is to empower gamers to unlock the value of their gaming profiles and be recognized for their contributions to gaming communities.

“We wanted to create a platform that finally rewards gamers for being who they are, through their profile and history as a gamer, through their passion, engagement, and community participation,” said Gao. “We feel very strongly that players should be able to control their gaming