Hammer & Chisel, a US-based gaming startup focused on tablets, has raised $8.2m funding led by venture capital firm Benchmark Capital, with the participation of startup accelerator Studio 9+, media and entertainment company Time Warner, IDG Capital Partners, a venture capital firm supported by technology media company International Data Group, and venture capital firms Accel Partners and GC Capital Partners.
Previously, in July 2013, Hammer & Chisel closed $1.1m in seed funding from investors including Studio 9+, Accel Partners, General Catalyst Partners, and IDG Ventures.
The funding will be used to launch Fates Forever, a tablet-based multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game.
Mitch Lasky, general partner at Benchmark Capital, who joins Hammer & Chisel’s board of directors, said: “We are strong believers in tablet-based gaming at Benchmark. We were particularly attracted to Hammer & Chisel’s commitment to quality and Jason’s history of building robust community features in mobile at OpenFeint.”
Hammer & Chisel has been founded by Jason Citron, whose previous company OpenFeint, a social platform for mobile games, was acquired by GREE for $104m in 2011. Citron said: “As I was building OpenFeint I would often look around and wonder why there weren’t any fantastic core games to play on my iPad like World of Warcraft or Magic the Gathering. Millions of gamers are going to grow up in a world where their first Personal Computer is a tablet, not a desktop PC. It seems like a no-brainer that these gamers will want to sit down and play a game like League or Dota 2.”