Madrid, Spain-based eRepublik, makers of what the startup refers to as a ‘massive online social strategy game’ (MOSS), has just raised €2 million – approx. $2.8 million – in Series A funding from AGF Private Equity. The company had previously raised up to €750,000 in seed funding from the VC firm and a host of angel investors, bringing the total invested to €2.75 million or a little over $3.8 million.
eRepublik, its first MOSS, is set in a browser-based mirrored version of the real world in which players (called citizens) can participate in politics, set economic policy, start businesses, engage in wars with other countries and interact socially with other players while they’re at it. The company pitches the virtual world to have an edge over other strategy games played online because it’s not nearly as time-consuming; 15 minutes per day they say should suffice.
According to the company, traffic numbers are going through the roof: the eRepublik website is said to have received over 3.7 million visits in May, with citizens from some 200 countries having spent over 55 million minutes and generating 95 million page views navigating the virtual world during that month. Pretty impressive for a small European company (eRepublik Labs only has 30 employees).
The fresh funding will be used to extend eRepublik in terms of new features: eRepublik co-founder and CEO Alexis Bonte says they’re only at about 25% of what the game should become in the near future. The company is also expanding the eRepublik platform into other languages – the company just launched a Spanish language version this month – and is busy preparing the launch of multiple new games.
Here’s a video of Bonte interviewing Guillaume Latour, a partner at AGF PE who will be joining the startup’s board:
I like to be citizen of Somalia but the country is not in the list… a failed state? eRupublik you should add the country to the list.
looks interesting, needs to make sure the stickiness is there
is a Bucharest Romania startup not madrid spain
@jeffrey paine its there if you are a strategy games fan but we do need to work more on it and make it better.
@ami well is a European start up with offices in Dublin, Madrid and Bucharest and yes a bigger part of team is in Bucharest including our co-founder George. (oh and our biggest market is the USA
I am glad that the game received some money. I hope they are going to use to implement some most wanted features like:
1. citizenship
2. PVP module war
3. More ingame mechanics to simulate RL.
scristian from Erepublik
Good luck
Cristian ,i go with you .
Thanks Cristian, the features you mentioned are requested by the entire community too and just like we considered any suggestion until now, we’ll be focusing on this in the future too.
Besides virtual goods .. what could be other sources of revenue .. opinions anyone ??
Going off the info they gave out last October (sorry if it’s now out dated) you buy their virtual dollars with real dollars. Which, in a virtual replica of the real world, has some interesting connotations. I assume with that many players their sales of virtual power goes along way to covering costs.
I’d buy instructions, i had no idea what to do
I’d buy instructions, I logged in and had no idea what to do, LOL
Hi Adam, this video tutorial should help and its free
http://www.yout...h?v=Kont1DiUI_I
Congratulations, I linked this in an ingame article:
http://www.erep...211;831961/1/20
Thanks Jazar, really appreciate it!
what is wrong with those investors?
that game has the most bugs ever seen in the industry, and the developers know about it, and do nothing about it. it is a censored game, with articles against the admins and developers being deleted and the players banned. They should buy the game and sell it not bury more money in a failed development; the idea is great, the implementation is disastrous…
you are so right… i used to love that game, now it really gets on my nerve
Yes, maybe the game had some bugs and a lot of high profile players were banned because they exploited this bugs but majority of them are fixed now. If you know some bugs please report them to admins, like Jazar said the admins are responding very fast now.
Personally, I was upset too, the bugs caused a lot of trouble and a lot of early players left the game, but I hope that some features like PVP game will bring them back.
none of the bugs at the base of the many exploits done in the game have been fixed; NONE! you can still print money and products for free!!!! few of the gazillion clones have been banned. and the admins are only doing censorship… the game is only getting worse not better
Congratualtions to the eRepublik guys for raising this money
seriously, this is one of the buggiest games ever!!!
never before have I seen a game with so many exploits. some Exploits took nearly a year to fix!!
above that there is little game support and admins ban ppl who criticize the game.
I agree with the above. I’ve been playing for almost a year hoping the game would be improved but it has not. It is full of bugs, glitches and has Admins who are completely unresponsive both to bug reports and to player suggestions. I predict this game will disappear within the next year. Too bad. It has great potential.
http://www.erep...er/Nathan+Woods
If you want to join =]
its fun…become a citizen.