Bellevue, Wash.-based video game company ProbablyMonsters is raising more cash. A new SEC filing indicates that the company has raised $50 million of a larger round. A spokesperson declined to comment on the filing.
Founded in 2016 by ex-Bungie CEO Harold Ryan, ProbablyMonsters is a collective that bills itself as “building a family of sustainable game studios through a people-first culture.” Rather than being a traditional game publisher, it takes a more active role in business management, in an arrangement that’s intended to free up its studios’ personnel to spend more time on creative work.
In a conversation with GeekWire back in 2019, Ryan defined ProbablyMonsters as an “AAA” studio. The term, borrowed from major-league baseball, is typically used in the games industry to refer to big games made by big teams, with Ryan’s personal definition of “AAA” as a project with a crew of at least 75 people. With that in mind, the new funding appears significant, but may not go quite as far as one might expect.
There are currently three studios under the ProbablyMonsters umbrella. The only one of the three that has revealed anything about its current projects is Firewalk Studios, which announced back in April that it had partnered with Sony Creative Entertainment to create a brand-new multiplayer game.
Firewalk is led by an assortment of talent that formerly worked at Bungie, including game director Ryan Ellis and executive producer Elena Siegman, which is suggestive that its debut project will be a first-person shooter. No details have been revealed yet, however, except that the new game is an original IP and will be published by PlayStation.
Other ProbablyMonsters studios include Cauldron, which has an unannounced project in the works, and a third unnamed studio, the “RPG Team,” which is naturally working on an equally unnamed new cooperative RPG.
ProbablyMonsters’ next step, such as what it may plan to do with its current round of funding, has yet to be announced.
