Studio Behind Hello Neighbor Secures $15 Million In Series A Funding

TheGamer

By Solomon Thompson

Published Feb 16, 2019

Tinybuild, publishers of survival horror game Hello Neighbor, have secured $15 million dollars in Series A funding to grow the company.

Via: thegamer.com

Tinybuild, publisher of survival horror game Hello Neighbor, has secured $15 million dollars in Series A funding, which will be used to grow the company. The investor behind the vast cash injection has not been named by tinyBuild. The developers of No Time To Explain and publisher of such varied games as Clustertruck, Punch Club, and Party Hard, are growing at an astonishing rate, hiring community managers, producers, and developers in both Seattle and Amsterdam.

In addition to growing the company with new hires, they also hope to use the investment to establish and build new franchises. Hello Neighbor is apparently a prime example of this school of thought: in addition to the base game, first published in 2017, the game saw two follow-ups released last year: Secret Neighbor and Hello Neighbor: Hide and Seek, by Russian developers Dynamic Pixels. According to Gamesindustry.biz, there is also a third planned use for the funds: investment in new games that feature gameplay innovations, particularly those based on successful mods. This move is influenced by the enormous success of the battle royale genre, which began life as a mod for Minecraft inspired by The Hunger Games. This is not the first time that tinyBuild has shown an interest in the battle royale genre, having published Rapture Rejects, based on the Cyanide & Happiness comics, last November.

Despite receiving negative reviews, Hello Neighbor was a major success for tinyBuild, selling half a million copies in its first two months. The success of the game was followed by a major investment of $3.75 million of seed funding via Makers Fund in April 2018, which was used to expand the franchise.

The game’s first add-on, Secret Neighbor, saw a multiplayer mode brought to the franchise, allowing players to work together to discover the Neighbor’s secrets, and even to play as him, infiltrating the main group of players. This was followed by Hello Neighbor: Hide and Seek, which served as a prequel to the original game. Will Hello Neighbor be able to sustain its Five Nights At Freddy’s-style rate of growth in the long term? We shall have to see, but with their new investment and the game still proving popular, it shows no signs of slowing down just yet.