Social game leader CrowdStar has raised $23 million in a first round of funding led by Intel Capital and Time Warner Investments. The company plans to use the money to double its headcount and expand on a global scale.
The deal shows that social gaming has attracted some very big investors and continues to have be a magnet for attention, but CrowdStar’s own journey shows how tough it is to compete in the market for social games on Facebook.
“We want to be a global social and mobile gaming company, not just a Facebook game company,” said Peter Relan (pictured right), chairman of incubator YouWeb and chief executive of CrowdStar in Burlingame, Calif. “As we do so, it becomes difficult to fund all of that investment through our Facebook growth alone.”
Chinese game operator The9 and NVInvestments also participated in the round. Those are pretty well-heeled global investors for a company that wasn’t on the map until the fall of 2009, when CrowdStar launched its first hit social game on Facebook.
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