A personal trainer… for online games! Gameplay service Legionfarm has raises $6M

Game service Legionfarm was relaunched in 2017 by Alexey Belyankin, a former professional gamer who was in the top 0.01% of World of Warcraft players. Three years later, the project raised $1.5M, with TMT Investments and Skyeng co-founder Denis Smetnev as investors. Then the startup’s team got into Y Combinator winter pitch, which was one of the investors in the round announced yesterday.

The company raised $6M during Series A, and the project was funded by SVB, Y Combinator, Scrum VC, Kevin Lin, Altair Capital, Ankur Nagpal and others. The money has been raised over the past year in the form of safe notes, with the company’s total valuation undisclosed.

The service allows players to improve their skills by playing together with professional gamers. The service is monetised through a subscription system, where a month of use costs $25 or $50 versus $12 for an hour-long game without a subscription. In the comment for Forbes, Belyankin notes: “This year we plan to raise a round a few times that amount as we grow steadily from month to month, and in April 2021 we crossed the psychological milestone of 100 000 paid hours per month.”

The service not only improves the skills of average gamers but also allows professional players to earn money and develop a gaming community. “We recently learned that one professional player can attract seven or more new customers for the platform if we get the professionals right,” said Belyankin.

In 2020, the online gaming market generated an estimated $21.1B in revenue, a record 21.9% year-on-year increase. This jump is driven by the pandemic and widespread lockdowns, which have forced many people to stay home and turn to digital entertainment as well as find new channels to communicate. The online gaming audience is projected to exceed 1.3B people in 2025.