NOVEMBER 8 2021

Published in the Australian Financial Review

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User-generated gaming content platform Mod.io has scored $US26 million ($34 million) from big name international backers including Chinese multinational Tencent and the venture capital arm of toy company LEGO.

The company, which launched in 2019, is designed to enable amateur gamers using the code of popular to create their own content to connect with big and small gaming studios alike.

Joining Tencent and LEGO in its latest funding round is local VC outfit Our Innovation Fund, as well as existing Mod.io investors Makers Fund, Play Ventures, Sequoia Capital India’s Surge and GameTech Ventures, as well as Machinefloor.

Co-founded and led by video game modification (known as “modding”) website ModDB founder, Scott Reismanis, Mod.io launched in 2019 and is now used by 450,000 people daily, has 8.5 million registered players/creators, has enabled the creation of 1.3 million mods, and has 80 games featured on its platform.

The games include Humankind, Deep Rock Galactic, Space Engineers and Snowrunner.

Reismanis has been involved in the modding space since 2002, when he launched ModDB - one of the earliest creator communities for game modification.

Popular games including Fortnite, League of Legends, Counter-Strike and Dota 2 started as “mods” of older games.

Reismanis’ goal is to help gaming studios incorporate this user-generated content (UGC) and build engagement between the studios and a game’s players.

“We’ve created a tool that makes it easy to launch a creator community, where players submit content, and it becomes available in game at the click of a button,” he said.

“Before it was a manual process to find content, now Mod.io lets gaming studios integrate it in game, and players can browse content the other players have submitted.

“We’ve barely scratched the surface of how UGC is adopted in the market.”

The funds, he says, will enable Mod.io to offer more cross-platform support, help studios create new business models by engaging with creators, and expand into emerging markets for UGC such as free-to-play games, mobile games and Asian markets.

The capital raise kicked off on the back of online gaming platform Roblox’s IPO in March. Reismanis said Roblox’s success had crystallised for investors the scale of the opportunity in user created games.

“For anyone in this space, there’s international and local investors who are very keen to support and see it grow and nurture great talent,” he said.

“But one thing Australia doesn’t have enough of is the infrastructure... and we’re a picks and shovels business.”