Sequoia’s Surge co-leads game development service Mod.io’s $4m round

Game development service firm Mod.io announced that it has secured US$4 million in investment led by Sequoia Capital India’s Surge and Makers Fund.

Play Ventures, GameTech Ventures, and Machinefloor also participated in the round, according to a statement.

Mod.io co-founders Patrick Sotirou (left) and Scott Reismanis / Photo credit: Mod.io

Based in Australia, Mod.io provides a multiplatform backend service that helps game developers integrate mod support and user-generated content (UGC) marketplaces into their games. The company is part of the fourth cohort of Sequioa’s Surge, a biannual scale-up program for startups across Southeast Asia and India.

Modding has been a complex process for players, according to the company. It requires them to manually download, extract, and install the mods they want to use, which can make UGC inaccessible to players.

Mod.io said it aims to address these issues by helping developers deploy mod support into their games, enabling players to browse, install, and manage their mod collections in-game or through a web interface.

The company says that to date, its service has been used by 50 games to power their mod and creator communities, with 120,000 users accessing the platform daily on PC, console, and mobile.

“We foresee that mods will be a staple on every platform and elevated to the position of a key game feature. Creator economies will thrive and become more commonplace, with mod communities gravitating away from store-controlled solutions and towards agnostic platforms such as Mod.io,” said Mod.io co-founder Scott Reismanis.

The latest investment comes after the startup closed a US$1 million seed round led by Play Ventures in March this year.