New Investment Leads Big Change Including University Partnership for Career Matching Initiative, Offering Direct Pathway to Console Publishing and Now Connects Partner Studios with 60+ Celebrities
New York – March 28, 2024 – VoxPop Games, Inc., the Independent Game Development Platform, today announced the completion of their Acquisition of the Delaware-based mobile studio, Celebrity Games.
Now a wholly-owned subsidiary of VoxPop, Celebrity Games previously developed mobile apps integrating actors, athletes, and musicians, including Derrick Lewis, Ric Flair, and Riff Raff. These celebrities would not only contribute their likenesses to the games, but would also contribute prizes that the player base could win, such as private livestreams or signed merchandise. Now, with their combination, Celebrity’s assets are coming to the VoxPop Platform.
“Celebrity cameos are a mainstay in AAA gaming – think Keanu Reeves in Cyberpunk, or Nikki Minaj in Call of Duty,” said VoxPop CEO Charles Yu. “Smaller studios may not consider it due to budget constraints or not knowing where to start negotiating with talent. We see tremendous potential in helping indie game developers find the right celebrity integrations for their games. Plus, our new celebrity friends can submit game ideas through our platform and recruit their fans to help them build their own games!”
John Euliano, managing partner of Rainmaker Strategic Capital, explained that this investment serves as the first salvo in a new fundraising round.
“From the day Charles shared his vision for the acquisition, I was sold,” said Euliano. “Given the recent failures of large studios we think investing in indie studios that bring innovative and creative games to life is important and others will see the growth opportunity in our offering and look forward to meeting like-minded investors.”
VIDEO GAME CAREER READINESS
The merger comes on the heels of VoxPop’s new career readiness initiative, connecting university students with job opportunities in gaming. The program is for students of all disciplines – not just STEM related majors – looking to break into the games industry. Participating universities include Marist College, Stony Brook University, and Bradley University. The initiative along with the Celebrity Games merger, and bringing their first title Outer Terror to consoles this month, VoxPop is well-positioned as a developer-focused leader in the indie publishing space.
“We couldn’t be happier with the VoxPop partnership,” said Kyle Grenier, a Disaster Golf developer and Bradley University graduate. “As a student development team creating Disaster Golf as a capstone project, we were total neophytes when it came to the business side of launching a game. VoxPop saw something in us and were instrumental in marketing the game and guiding us through the publishing process. Now we have a hit game on Steam with great reviews because of this key partnership.”
For more information on VoxPop Games, please visit www.voxpopgames.com.
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ABOUT VOXPOP GAMES
VoxPop Games is a New York-based game development and distribution platform. VoxPop primarily caters to independent developers who may not have the marketing budget to pursue traditional advertising and hiring as a model.
Developers can use VoxPop to find collaborators using a percentage of their future profits, recruiting everything from programmers and artists to build the game, to influencers and celebrities to promote their products. Meanwhile, contractors can trust that their payments will be backed by a robust, and automated system which will keep their employers’ honest months or years after the project’s completion.
VoxPop is part of the NYC Games Industry Council and collaborates with non-profit groups like the NYC IGDA. VoxPop hopes to disrupt the gaming market by creating systems for smaller content creators to prop up one another.
