Former executives from Funcom (@Funcom), Lockwood, and Bohemia (@bohemiainteract) have raised $5M to create a new studio ‘Red Rover Interactive’ and innovate the hardcore survival genre.

With the goal of creating truly captivating multiplayer experiences and shaking up the survival genre in the process, brand new studio Red Rover Interactive can today lift the lid on its future plans.

The new outfit - which has already established bases in the Norwegian capital Oslo and Newcastle in England’s North East - has been founded by games industry veterans who collectively worked on series such as Conan Exiles, Dune Awakening, DayZ, Avakin Life, Crysis 2, Ryse, and Ghost Recon, amongst others.

Red Rover’s goals? Initially, to utilise the studio’s considerable collective experiences working with successful multiplayer-focused IP to catapult the survival genre in a new direction, placing player agency and drama front and centre. And more long term? In the developer’s own words, to “create the most novel and engaging multiplayer experiences on the market.”

“We believe multiplayer interactions are fundamentally more powerful than PVE ones,” says Red Rover Interactive CEO Fred Richardson. “This is something most persistent online games don't leverage, often being built as single player experiences that support many players. We plan to lean into this, starting with the survival genre which we are intimately familiar with, taking it in a genuinely new direction.”

Red Rover Interactive is headed up by:

• CEO Fred Richardson (Funcom, Ubisoft Reflections)
• COO Joe Stevens (Lockwood Publishing, Ubisoft Reflections)
• Design Director Marek Zilavy (Bohemia Interactive, Funcom)
• Technical Director Daniel Ratzer (Funcom)
• Art Director Sebastian Zimmermann (Nordeus, Jagex, Crytek)

Red Rover Interactive is focused on cultivating mid-sized, close-knit, co-located teams. This begins with the foundational team of 17 members, most of whom have collaborated previously, leveraging their significant shared experience. From a creative standpoint, the studio aspires to produce titles designed for infinite engagement, perfectly suited to the age of content creation.

The studio has already secured significant seed investment from Behold Ventures and The Games Fund, as well as other participating investors such as Lifelike Capital, GEM capital, Acequia Capital, and a suite of angel investors, coming in at just under $5 million.

Now, with its sights set on the horizon, Red Rover Interactive is calling on fearless developers with a thirst for the extraordinary to join its ranks. Developers ready to shape genre-defining projects in Oslo or Newcastle are invited to step into the ring.

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Official Site: https://redroverinteractive.com