Dubai, UAE — Playgama, a UAE-based game tech startup aiming to give the developers of HTML5 games (also known as web games or browser games) access to the whole web market at once, has raised $3 million in a funding round led by The Open Platform, part of the Telegram ecosystem, and s16vc, a global venture capital fund backed by 150+ successful startup founders. The round is also backed by a New York-based VC firm and early investor of more than 30 unicorns FJ Labs, the most active seed focused VC in gaming The Games Fund, Telegram-related investment fund TON Ventures, and the CEO and Founder of global FinTech company Unlimit Kirill Eves.

The Middle East is emerging as a dynamic hub for the gaming industry, with a rapidly expanding development ecosystem and increasing revenue streams. As of November 2024, the region's gaming market is estimated to reach $6.34 billion, with projections indicating growth to $10.69 billion by 2029, representing a robust CAGR of 11.02%. This growth creates a fertile environment for HTML5 gaming to flourish. For developers from the Middle East, Playgama opens an opportunity to effortlessly publish their games on numerous portals with diverse audiences around the world, including key markets like Europe and the USA.

On the global scale, the HTML5 gaming market is undergoing a renaissance, valued at $23 billion in 2021, it is projected to grow to $32 billion by 2030 and driven by in-game purchases and advertising. Despite this growth, the market remains fragmented. Unlike centralized hubs like App Store or Google Play on mobile or Steam and the Epic Games Store on PC, the HTML5 market comprises thousands of standalone playgrounds, as well as non-gaming websites, media, social networks and messengers — both global and region-specific. Even leaders capture only small fractions of the global web gaming audience, and there’s currently no way for developers to access the entire market at once. Playgama aims to change this streamlining distribution through a "master key" approach.

Playgama was founded in 2023 by Dmitry Kachmar during a sabbatical he took to complete his studies at Harvard Business School. Avid gamer since his childhood, he discovered that HTML5 gaming market had a problem: unlike centralized hubs like App Store or Google Play on mobile or Steam and the Epic Games Store on PC, the HTML5 market comprises thousands of standalone playgrounds, as well as non-gaming websites, media, social networks and messengers — both global and region-specific. Even global market leaders capture only small fractions of the global web gaming audience, and there’s currently no way for developers to access the entire market at once. Playgama aims to change this.

Dmitry Kachmar, Founder of Playgama: “We want to transform the entire web gaming market and empower HTML5 game creators to effortlessly reach audiences they once could only dream of. Currently, Playgama’s distribution network has the potential to reach over 200 million monthly active players— and this is just the beginning. With this funding, we’ll accelerate further improvement of Playgama’s platform for developers, expand our toolkit, and introduce advanced analytics and fintech solutions.

As a global company headquartered in the UAE, we are especially focused on collaborating with game developers from the Middle East, offering them the opportunity to reach a vast global audience, including key markets like Europe and the USA. Having our main office in Dubai enables us to integrate into the region’s GameDev community and contribute our web gaming expertise. We aim to inspire more game creators in the Middle East—from indie developers to major studios—to explore new horizons by developing HTML5 games or porting their existing titles to the web, helping the local market grow even faster.”

The platform is designed to provide web game developers with a simple and efficient route to tap into all available platforms, languages, and markets, maximizing their chances of reaching a large and diverse audience. To achieve this, Playgama is creating a full-scale Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) ecosystem that is aimed to provide game developers with with all the tools they need to navigate the fragmented web market, enhancing their reach and ROI while freeing them from the hassle of tackling distribution challenges and allowing them to focus on game creation and development. The open-source “integrate once, reach everywhere” Software Development Kit, Playgama Bridge, is at the center of its ecosystem and has already been used by over a thousand developers.

The company’s partnership with The Open Platform and TON Ventures is particularly strategic, as Playgama wants to bridge the gap between Web2 and Web3 gaming. Playgama’s proprietary gaming portal playgama.com already supports play-to-earn mechanics and crypto payments.

Andrey Klebanov, Managing Director, The Open Platform, said: “At The Open Platform, we value Playgama’s commitment to providing HTML5 developers with an end-to-end toolkit for launching games as Telegram mini-apps and browser-based experiences. This approach not only simplifies access to diverse platforms but also opens doors for fintech and crypto innovations—offering developers and  players new possibilities in gaming and payments.”