Team Behind Angry Birds To Develop One-Stop Gaming Shop For Developers

September 13, 2018 7:54 PM

Beijing-based video game developer Cocos announced today that it raised $40 million in its latest round of funding.

According to the announcement, the game developer received capital from Binance Labs, Neo Global Capital, and 500 Startups, as well as unnamed others. The new capital will reportedly allow the company to accelerate the development of a new blockchain-powered gaming platform.

Cocos is responsible for the development of popular mobile games such as Angry Birds, Clash of Kings, and Badlands, which all currently run on the company’s open-source Cocos-2d-x platform.

According to the Cocos FAQ page, its new platform, dubbed Cocos-BCX, will consist of three important components. The first is a game engine that will act as a “game development software framework and virtual machine.” The second is a “visual and data-driven development environment.” The last is the CocosChain, which is a public blockchain designed specifically for games and high-performance, high-transaction applications.

The tokens on the Cocos-BCX blockchain will apparently function as a medium of exchange, as a way to validate proof of stake, and as a governance tool. They will reportedly be ERC-20 compatible.

Development of the new platform began in November of 2017, with the first test of a demo version taking place in March of this year. The release of the full testnet version is slated for the last quarter of 2018.

Ella Zhang, Head of Binance Labs, spoke to her company’s investment in Cocos-BCX:

“Gaming has potential to be the low hanging fruit in blockchain industry yet the application in this space remains largely untapped. Cocos is one of the largest gaming developer communities in the world, and …their team [has] [a] proven track record in [the] gaming space. We hope Cocos-BCX initiative will drive more real use cases for crypto adoption and reveal more potential of blockchain technology.”

It may not be low-hanging fruit for much longer, with other prominent video game developers also seeing the potential of blockchain technology to revolutionize the industry. In July, ETHNews published an interview with Nicolas Pouard of video game giant Ubisoft, in which he talked about how Ubisoft was planning on utilizing blockchain technology in its products. 

Nathan Graham is a full-time staff writer for ETHNews. He lives in Sparks, Nevada, with his wife, Beth, and dog, Kyia. Nathan has a passion for new technology, grant writing, and short stories. He spends his time rafting the American River, playing video games, and writing.

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