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A number of CCP, Remedy and Next Games veterans have banded together to launch Mainframe Industries, a new MMO studio.
Having raised seed funding of €2m, the founders – Börkur Eiríksson, Kjartan Pierre Emilsson, Thor Gunnarsson, Fridrik Haraldsson, Reynir Hardarson, Sulka Haro, Kristján Valur Jónsson, Jyrki Korpi-Anttila, Saku Lehtinen, Ansu Lönnberg, Eetu Martola, Vigfús Ómarsson, and Jón Helgi Thórarinsson – have set up base in Helsinki and Reykjavik to build the “first open-world, social sandbox MMO built from the ground up for cloud gaming”.
Mainframe wants to deliver “friction-free access from social networks and streaming platforms on the device of your choice” which it hopes will “greatly expand the creative canvas for game developers”.
Mainframe’s €2m seed funding comes via investors Maki.vc, Play Ventures, Crowberry Capital and Sisu Game Ventures.
Bottom, from left: Fridrik, Kjartan, Kristjan, Jón Helgi, Vigfús, Reynir & Börkur
“The creative and business opportunity that cloud gaming brings to social and immersive online games is unlike anything we’ve seen on the screens we play on today,” said Thor Gunnarsson, co-founder and CEO at Mainframe. “We’re incredibly excited to announce our air bridge across the Nordics, having assembled a founding team with the AAA, MMO and mobile pedigree needed to build the game we’ve been preparing for our whole lives.
“For Mainframe, the ability to deliver to all platforms a level of immersion and world simulation typically only seen in high-end PC games means that the visual gap between devices disappears as we move to the cloud,” Gunnarsson added. “And we see tremendous potential in the expansive computing and storage capacity of the cloud. We can make bigger and better games with more complex physics simulation, AI, and character systems to deliver a fresh gaming experience unbounded by the constraints of individual platforms.”
