LOS ANGELES–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Lucid Sight, the independent game studio behind MLB Champions, CSC with Star Trek, Herocade, Polyrunner, and several other games spanning VR, AR, and NFTs, is announcing that it has raised $2.58 million to launch a cloud-hosted multiplayer service called Colyseus Arena. Colyseus Arena is a fully managed solution that handles server management, infrastructure, and scaling so that game makers can focus on game design and development. The funding round was led by Galaxy Interactive. Other investors included VamosVentures, Goal Venture Partners, Gaingels, as well as existing investors. The new round brings total raised to $15.4 Million.
Earlier this year Lucid Sight acquired Colyseus, the most popular open-source Node.js multiplayer framework. The Colyseus open-source framework has had over 300,000 downloads since it was created six years ago and averages 10,000 downloads per month. Lucid Sight created Colyseus Arena because the number one request from Colyseus game developers was a cloud-hosted solution for Colyseus. Colyseus Arena reduces or eliminates the need for dedicated networking and DevOps engineers in multiplayer games. “Networking and DevOps engineers have always created a $500k to $1MM annual drag on every multiplayer game Lucid Sight has ever created. Our goal with Arena is to bring that cost way down, so more styles of casual, hypercasual, and NFT games can afford rich multiplayer experiences. Colyseus will always be open-source and we made the lowest tier of Arena FREE because we wanted no barrier for developers to dive in and GET TO FUN FASTER,” said Lucid Sight CEO Randy Saaf.
With Colyseus Arena, game developers can set up, manage and update their servers with a few clicks from an intuitive administration dashboard. Features include:
Get started for FREE with an Indie/Dev plan.
Easily manage your servers and add server-side logic from an intuitive dashboard.
Optimized server configuration and infrastructure setup.
Global availability with 7 data centers and regional access points.
Worry-free scaling with tier 4 and up plans so when your game peaks there will be no interruptions.
Enterprise-grade load balancing & custom matchmaking.
24/7 monitoring & DDoS Protection.
DevOps as a service for non-Colyseus users.
Host your custom Linux Servers.
Host Unity / Unreal headless server.
Get fully customized solutions for projects of all sizes.
The simple setup allows you to GET TO FUN FASTER(TM).
Lucid Sight began accepting Colyseus Arena Early Access sign-ups in Feb 2021 and has since amassed hundreds of customers with games supporting millions of Daily Active Users. Customers of note include Lightfox Games (Knight’s Edge), PM Studios (Squish), Tobspr (SchoolBreak.io), Kirka.io, and massively popular Indian streaming and short-form UGC video platform MX Media & Entertainment. “We are excited to use Colyseus Arena as the managed multiplayer server solution for Knight’s Edge. We see Lucid Sight as a valuable partner as we begin the journey of growing our game and supporting our players,” said Lightfox CEO Ryan Hanft-Murphy.
Colyseus Arena can be used by all types of game developers but it proves uniquely powerful for multiplayer games that require a flexible server hosting solution. By utilizing a modern containers-centric technology stack, developers have instant scalability with a pay-for-usage billing model. “One of the fastest growing verticals we see for Colyseus Arena is our hosting of web, quick-play, instant-play games. These types of games typically run within another application or standalone on a mobile accessible website. For these games a flexible hosting plan that has the ability to scale from 1 CPU to 1000s CPUs and then back down again in a short period of time is essential and a service Arena provides. Combine this with Colyseus’s small resource footprint and simple JavaScript programming language and you quickly see why Colyseus Arena provides the BEST solution for these instant play style multiplayer games,” said Lucid Sight CTO Fazri Zubair.
Lucid Sight has also seen Colyseus and Colyseus Arena usage by non-game developers. Projects such as virtual office and event platform Teamflow, innovative school enrichment program Synthesis, and an immersive VR sports experience created by VRGlass are all examples of how Colyseus is being used by a wide variety of non-gaming developers. Lucid Sight is also using its experience as an innovator in the NFT space to provide Colyseus Arena to a number of NFT and metaverse projects.
Interested developers can begin making multiplayer games and experiences by joining Arena Free to start.
About Lucid Sight: Los Angeles-based Lucid Sight was founded in 2015 by serial entrepreneurs Randy Saaf and Octavio Herrera, and experienced game technologist Fazri Zubair. Lucid Sight is known for developing games on the cutting-edge of technology such as VR and NFTs. First-party titles include MLB Champions, CSC featuring Star Trek, HeroCade, Polyrunner, and many others. Lucid Sight also owns Colyseus (https://colyseus.io), the fastest growing open source multiplayer game engine in the world with over 5,000 projects started each month and 3,000 developers active in social channels. Colyseus was started in 2015 by Endel Dreyer out of his desire for an easy server authoritative multiplayer framework for node.js to power his own games.