Jan 27, 2022

Share The co-founder of popular Australian video game studio Alta has predicted a boom in the local sector due to improved government incentives, after his company and fellow Aussie firm Perion banked significant private funding rounds to pursue metaverse opportunities. Alta, the company behind successful virtual reality role-playing game ‘A Township Tale’, which spent seven weeks at number one on the Oculus charts, has banked $17.3 million from heavy hitting US-investors Makers Fund and Andreessen Horowitz, as well as Perpetual’s local tech investor Thomas Rice . Gaming firm Alta co-founders Tima Anoshechkin, Joel van de Vorstenbosch and Boramy Unn are set to expand their existing game into the metaverse. Oscar Colman Melbourne-based Perion meanwhile has been valued at $US60 million ($84 million) following a $12 million investment from Alameda Research, Framework Ventures, and music duo the Chainsmokers. Perion operates as a decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO), and was founded by the former world number one player of Axie Infinity, a popular play-to-earn game . It leases and manages NFT assets for use in play-to-earn games, engaging players as independent contractors. Axie tokens, the money that drives the game, trade for real-world money, and in 2020 one player sold a particularly skilful Axie game character (which are a bit like Pokemons) to another player for a price equivalent to $US120,000. Advertisement While government tax breaks have not been behind the early success of his company, Alta co-founder and chief executive Tima Anoshechkin said a combination of recently introduced Federal and State-based incentives had seen the local scene springing to life. “Video games are exploding thanks to the government tax offsets,” he said. “It feels like day and night here, I’ve never seen so many gaming studios growing and so much demand for video game developers.” Last May, the Australian Federal government announced the Digital Games Tax Offset which is set to take effect in July 2022. The offset will refund video game developers 30 per cent of their costs. Several states have also taken that further, with South Australia, New South Wales and Victoria adding another 10 per cent refund for developers in their respective jurisdictions. Advertisement Queensland, in a bid to beef up its gaming industry, has added another 15 per cent to their video game rebate, making it the most generous state for video game development. Mr Anoshechkin said that prior to the success of his game on the Meta-owned Oculus platform, he had spent five fruitless years trying to get funding. Recent interest in the concept of the ‘metaverse,’ and its link to cryptocurrencies and NFTs, however, has seen venture capitalists begin pumping money into start-ups. He said it took Alta only 72-hours to close this funding round after Andreessen Horowitz and Makers Fund came knocking. “It’s left us in a good position, and we are growing really fast,” Mr Anonshechkin said, adding the game now has half-a-million users. The fresh funding will be used to expand ‘A Township Tale’ into a metaverse-type game, developing interoperable components and worlds that are unique to each user. Advertisement While non-fungible-tokens, or NFTs , are often linked with metaverse gaming, Mr Anonshechkin said Alta won’t use them at this point. “Ownership within video games is very cool, and the theme of play-to-earn is very reasonable, but the platforms we sell our game on currently don’t support NFTs, so we won’t build with them now,” he said. Perion is already deeply rooted in the NFT scene, and was founded by Amos Whitewolf, former world number 1 Axie Infinity player, and crypto-futures trader Mitch Penman-Allen. Mr Whitewolf said the metaverse is a massive untapped economic resource. “And play-to-earn gaming is the tool by which we are going to unlock its economic benefits,” he said. Correction: Perion was founded by former world number 1 Axie Infinity player Amos Whitewolf. An earlier version of this story suggested Perion was behind the development of Axie Infinity, which is incorrect. Jessica Sier writes on technology, internet culture, cryptocurrencies and software from our Sydney newsroom. She has previously covered global capital markets and economics. Connect with Jessica on Twitter . Email Jessica at jessica.sier@afr.com Save