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Second Life Developer Gains New Funding

Officials from virtual world firm Linden Lab have announced that the company has completed a new $11 million round of funding, led by venture capital firm Globespan Capit...

David Jenkins, Blogger

March 28, 2006

1 Min Read
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Officials from virtual world firm Linden Lab have announced that the company has completed a new $11 million round of funding, led by venture capital firm Globespan Capital Partners. The company last obtained $8 million in a previous round of funding in October 2004, with backing from Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos and Lotus founder Mitch Kapor, amongst others. The company intends to use the money to fund “aggressive international expansion” with German and Japanese language versions, and for additional hiring needed to boost its infrastructure from its current 70 employees to at least 100. Massively multiplayer online (MMO) game Second Life is free to play and allows users to create any kind of personalized clothing, vehicles, buildings and other objects, with the real-life equivalent costs being for virtual plots of land within the game or for buying in-game items and services. The game currently only has around 165,000 users, far less than the 6 million currently boosted by market leader World of WarCraft, which is a much more hardcore-style monthly subscription title, compared to Second Life's wider-aimed 'virtual world' setup. Funding has been earmarked for improvements in the above areas, with the company also continuing its fellowship scheme which CEO Philip Rosedale recently revealed at his summit keynote speech at GDC now has 100 different research-oriented projects ongoing.

About the Author

David Jenkins

Blogger

David Jenkins ([email protected]) is a freelance writer and journalist working in the UK. As well as being a regular news contributor to Gamasutra.com, he also writes for newsstand magazines Cube, Games TM and Edge, in addition to working for companies including BBC Worldwide, Disney, Amazon and Telewest.

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