Accelerace invests in prosocial gaming startup Digital Devotion Games
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Accelerace invests in Digital Devotion Games, an indie game studio that specializes in making quality multiplayer games for social entertainment, and a graduate of the Beyond Beta accelerator program.
The gaming industry has quickly become one of the biggest moneymakers in entertainment, with competitive games dominating the market during the last decade. As a result, a ‘winning at all costs’ mentality has replaced a gaming culture centered around social togetherness.
Digital Devotion Games is the response to this competitive culture. For millions of people around the world, including Co-founder and CEO Mikkel Søgaard, video games are their primary social space where existing friendships are deepened, and new friends are found. By making quality multiplayer games for social entertainment, the goal is to invent a new game genre that brings the atmosphere of social togetherness and prosocial interactions back into gaming:
“I think it’s a shame to see how the competitive culture has affected social togetherness in games over the last decade. It’s no longer about having fun together, now it’s about winning and being the best even at the expense of others. I believe that games can both create and strengthen friendships, and that is why I started Digital Devotion Games. We are here to build unique games that bring people closer together and give players a place to enjoy each other’s company as a daily social activity.” (Mikkel Søgaard, Co-founder and CEO at Digital Devotion Games)
Having closed their first investment round, the team is fully focused on getting their first game, Project Tumble, to the market with a social focus from the bottom up. This is Accelerace’s first investment in a game studio, driven by the belief that those game studios that will succeed with the Games as a Service (GaaS) model, will succeed big:
“Digital Devotion Games is a very dedicated and creative team with a very clear vision of how games of the future should be. With their unique approach to prosocial gaming and with their strong execution abilities, we see them as a strong newcomer in the Danish games industry and we are super excited to be part of their first investment round.” (Michael Rohde Böwadt, Business Accelerator and Investment Manager at Accelerace)
Mikkel Søgaard started working on Digital Devotion Games in July 2019, and onboarded Dennis Schau, Nicolai Vesterdahl, Christian Wortmann, Emil Haugaard, Sune Hvidt and Jonas Lauridsen as co-founders. The team joined the Beyond Beta accelerator program in October 2020.
About Accelerace:
Since 2008, Accelerace has supported 800+ Danish and international startups, including Trustpilot and Templafy, made 65+ pre-seed investments and matched startups with industry-leading companies such as Tetra Pak, Arla, and Elia. Accelerace is also responsible for the management of NOME (Nordic Mentor Network for Entrepreneurship), an elite mentoring program for Nordic startups within therapeutics, medical devices, diagnostics, digital health, and industrial biotech.
Accelerace Invest II is the largest Danish fund in terms of numbers of investments. By making approximately 30 new investments in pre-seed stage startups every year until 2023, the ambition is to be Denmark’s most aggressive early-stage investor.
About Beyond Beta:
Beyond Beta is Denmark’s top-tier accelerator program for promising startups with a demonstrated growth ambition, operated by Accelerace, the Danish Business Hubs (under the lead of Copenhagen Business Hub – Erhvervshus Hovedstaden), and Danish Design Center, who have combined their experience of working with 1000+ startups to launch this next evolutionary step of European accelerators.
The platform-based approach means that startups can kick-start their journey today by joining the 100% free, online pre-accelerator, which can be used as an on-demand toolbox to build for scale or as a first step into the core accelerator program.