News of the deal has come from the Chinese business press and gaming sites, such as pocketgamer. LineKong, which swapped its original foray into the China PC market to the mobile game publishing segment, has been seeing monthly revenue from its mobile game, MMORPG The Legend of King, hit over $7m.
The latest $80m series C round was backed by private equity firms Orchid Asia, SAIF Partners, Starwish Global Limited, and Profitable Century International. At the time of writing there were no reports of existing investor IDG Capital Partners taking part in the deal.
Linekong raised $35m prior to this latest deal in two rounds from investors including IDG Capital Partners, North Light Venture Capital and New Enterprise Associates (NEA). IDG invested $10m in the series A round, which took place in 2007.
The new injection of capital will be used to expand its product pipeline in 2014, with 10 mobile games expected to be released, half of which will come from third-party developers.
The company’s chief executive officer Wang Feng has voiced the company’s intention to float the company on the Hong Kong stock exchange.