Wooga Receives $24M In Funding, Hits 30M Users

Berlin-based social games company Wooga (Bubble Island, Monster World) has received $24 million in Series B funding led by Highland Capital Partners. The studio also revealed that Fergal Mullen, a general partner at Highland who heads the company's investment activities in Europe, is set to join the board of directors at Wooga. Tenaya Capital and existing investors Balderton Capital and Holtzbrinck Ventures also participated in the investment round. Last month, the social games developer had over 20 million monthly users, and was the fourth biggest Facebook game studio. It now has 30 million monthly active users, and is the third biggest developer on the Facebook platform. Founded in 2009, the company launched with a team of five people, and now has over 80 employees, focusing on easy, accessible games for Facebook users. The company's userbase is now larger than that of Playdom, the developer purchased by Disney last year for as much as $763 million. Jens Begemann, founder of Wooga, said of the investment, "Wooga’s success is based on having the best people, and we will use this funding to hire the most talented artists, game designers and engineers. We intend to build the team to 150 employees by the end of 2011, hiring two new employees per week."