UPDATED 13:14 EDT / FEBRUARY 07 2018

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Vreal raises $11.7M to take virtual reality game streaming mainstream

Virtual reality livestreaming and broadcast platform Vreal Inc. announced today it has raised $11.7 million in a Series A funding round led by Axioma Ventures.

The platform was founded in 2015 to compete with 2-D livestreaming platforms such as Amazon.com Inc.’s Twitch and Google LLC’s YouTube with the intent to become the first of its kind for VR livestreaming. Once online, viewers would be able to enter into fully immersive VR environments by witnessing scenes from the point of view of the broadcaster’s “camera” or from anywhere else in the scene as a disembodied participant.

“VR is an immersive medium, and Vreal is the only way for viewers to step inside someone else’s VR gameplay and enjoy VR content the way it’s meant to be experienced,” said Todd Hooper, founder and chief executive of Vreal.

According to a Venture Reality Fund report the virtual reality market is being driven heavily by entertainment and video games represent a significant portion of that. In the second half of 2017, global investment in the VR industry reached $2.3 billion and entertainment-related investments rose 69 percent over the previous year.

The potential for growth in the VR market is significant, according to a report from Zion Market Research that predicts $26.89 billion in revenue by 2022. Although slow to grow over the past few years, VR viewership has also been increasing. Statista shows 90 million VR users reported in 2017 and a forecast of 171 million active VR users in 2018, including a significant number of gamers.

“Immersive virtual worlds are the future of gaming,” said Hooper, “and we’re building the highway that will take viewers to curated gameplay experiences, all alongside their friends and favorite gaming personalities.”

Watching video games is big business, even bigger than the online video industry in terms of viewers. A report from SuperData Research showed that game viewership exceeded even that of HBO, Netflix, ESPN and Hulu combined – estimated at 666 million viewers during 2017. The research outlet approximated that 564 million viewers would watch on YouTube and 212 million viewers would flock to Twitch.

Livestreaming is only one portion of Vreal’s approach to its VR platform. It also intends to be a broadcast platform for VR experiences similar to how television and movies are streamed from 2-D platforms.

To fill out its stable of VR broadcast titles, Vreal is working directly with content creators and networks such as Rooster Teeth, Machinima and Hyper RPG. With this partnership, the company hopes to help shape the platform, design production tools and explore new ways of developing engaging VR gaming for current audiences.

In order to participate in these VR experiences, users will be able to don a VR headset – such as an Oculus Rift, HTC Vive or Google Daydream – or the Vreal platform will broadcast to a 2-D window that renders the 3-D VR space for those without expensive headsets.

The platform is currently in closed alpha testing and has not yet released details on a launch date.

Besides Axioma Ventures, the new funding round included new investors Intel Capital and AET Fund, and existing investors Upfront Ventures, Vulcan Capital and CRCM Ventures also participated. The round brings the total funding for Vreal to $15 million following an initial seed round in 2015 that raised $3.3 million.

Image: Vreal

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