Pocket Gems Continues Successful Strategy of Mobile Category Creation; Receives Additional Investment from Tencent

SAN FRANCISCO, May 11, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Pocket Gems, a top independent developer of original mobile games and interactive entertainment, announced today that it reached all-time highs in both players and gross bookings in 2016, the most successful year in the history of the company.

Pocket Gems' growth comes from its strategy of pioneering new categories of games and interactive entertainment with Episode and War Dragons, investing in fundamental technology such as the Mantis graphics engine, and building long-lasting player communities.

"The Pocket Gems team has built an incredible company," said Jim Goetz, partner at Sequoia Capital. "Pocket Gems stands alone as the only independent game developer in the world with two entirely different top 50 category-creating titles, Episode and War Dragons."

The company is also announcing an additional investment from Tencent, a leading integrated Internet services provider in China, following their initial investment made in 2015. Pocket Gems will continue to operate independently, with Tencent and Sequoia Capital both remaining as minority investors.

"Tencent is happy to reaffirm our long term support for our strategic partner, Pocket Gems," said Steven Ma, Senior Vice President of Tencent. "We admire their history of focusing on top talent to create innovative new products that can delight users, and look forward to a bright future ahead."

The Tencent investment will go towards supporting major expansions for the Episode and War Dragons communities, as well as the upcoming launch of a new studio building 3D synchronous multiplayer mobile games for hardcore gamers. Following several years of development, Pocket Gems is planning to launch the new studio and its first title later this year.

The first of its kind, Episode is the world's largest mobile interactive storytelling platform, with over 55,000 stories and 3 billion episodes viewed. Episode has partnered with popular Hollywood franchises and celebrities like Mean Girls, Pretty Little Liars, and Demi Lovato to create engaging interactive stories. In addition, Episode works closely with more than 6 million creators from its community to publish a growing collection of user-generated stories.

One of the first synchronous multiplayer 3D games on mobile, War Dragons tripled its player base year over year, with close to 2 billion battles fought in 2016 alone. Built on Pocket Gems' proprietary Mantis graphics engine, War Dragons has engaged its community with real-time 3D graphics, 200+ unique dragons, crowdsourced art, and immersive live events with hundreds of thousands of simultaneous players.

"We're excited to build on our partnership with Tencent, whose unmatched strength in games will help us become one of the great developers of mobile games and interactive entertainment in the world," said Ben Liu, CEO of Pocket Gems. "We're still in the early days of mobile, and our pioneering team is eager to continue pushing the boundaries of what's possible. The best is yet to come."

About Pocket Gems
Founded in 2009, Pocket Gems is a leading developer of original mobile games and interactive entertainment. As one of the pioneers in mobile, Pocket Gems' titles have been downloaded more than 300 million times across iOS and Android. The Pocket Gems team has grown to 200 people based in San Francisco.

To learn more about Pocket Gems, visit www.pocketgems.com. To learn more about War Dragons and Episode, visit www.wardragons.com and www.episodeinteractive.com.

Contact:

Parnaz Taheri
Step 3 for Pocket Gems
[email protected] 
213.949.9696

SOURCE Pocket Gems

Related Links

http://www.pocketgems.com