TinyBuild Games secures $15 million investment

Hello Neighbor and Graveyard Keeper publisher tinyBuild has announced a sizable $15 million investment. While the source of the investment is unknown, tinyBuild told GeekWire that it plans to use the funding to grow the company and hire at its Washington and Netherlands offices.

In an email to GeekWire, tinyBuild CEO Alex Nichiporchik said that, when hiring, the company doesn’t shoehorn new team members into any specific roles. “I strongly believe it’s dangerous to build companies in the games industry that rely on a strict structure with specific roles — the industry is dynamic, and so is tinyBuild. The flip side of this is that it can often feel like everything is on fire. Organized chaos is what I call it!”

In addition to growing its staff, tinyBuild also said that it plans to utilize the $15 million to build new franchises. Hello Neighbor was a breakout success for the publisher, and spawned multiple products including two games. Recreating that success in a new IP is likely to be a key pillar of tinyBuild’s plans moving forward.

Finally, the company wants to use the investment in order to cultivate new indie talent and off-the-wall gameplay concepts. tinyBuild has made its name off of games built around unique game mechanics, such as Clustertruck’s truck-hopping, and is planning to dig into the mod scene to find new ideas based in the battle royale genre.

The $15 million investment comes on the heels of a $3.75 million funding boon last April. That money went into expanding the Hello Neighbor franchise, as well as funding new projects.

Founded in 2011 in order to develop and publish No Time to Explain, tinyBuild is based out of Bothell, Washington. According to the Washington Interactive Network, the region is home to over 400 technology companies, and is responsible for 23-thousand industry jobs and brings in $28 billion in revenue every year.

TinyBuild also has a development office in Utrecht, Netherlands. Other prolific studios that call the Netherlands home include Guerrilla Games, Two Tribes, and Lighthouse Interactive. According to a Gamasutra blog post from 2016, the Dutch game development scene is relatively stagnant and in need of stimulus; beyond Guerrilla’s Horizon Zero Dawn there haven’t been too many successful triple-A games to come out of the region. Hopefully tinyBuild’s efforts, fueled by its recent investment, can get the industry moving.