California-based venture capital firm Accel Partners, which has its UK base in London, has led a first round of fundraising into German mobile gaming company flaregames.

California-based venture capital firm Accel Partners, which has its UK base in London, has led a first round of fundraising into German mobile gaming company flaregames.
 
The investment firm, which also has interests in hugely popular smartphone game Angry Birds, has pledged €6 million (£5 million) to the business to help scale the company.
 
The capital will also be used to attract additional talent and to market the company’s upcoming line-up of games for mobile devices, according to a statement.
 
Klaas Kersting, CEO of flaregames, says, ‘Our first focus is on getting fun, high quality games to market, and reaching the mass-market as well as mid-core gamers with our line-up this year.
 
‘Our investors see the opportunity for mobile game companies to grow fast and the team’s extensive knowledge of the free-to-play gaming market is an asset that will enable us to create new mobile games that are both fun and commercially successful.’
 
Kersting founded the company in April 2011 with former game designer at Ubisoft Blue Byte Andreas Suika. Since then the pair have grown the business to its current position of 400 employees and 200 million registered users.
 
Harry Nelis, partner at Accel Partners, says that the mobile games business will likely be larger than the social games business.
 
He adds, ‘We’re backing flaregames because we believe in the team, technology, business model and, most of all, know that Klaas will drive the company to its full potential as it strives to become a major games company.’
 
The investment marks the second investment in a week for Accel Partners having been part of the series B fundraising secured by online fashion website Stylistpick.
 
Accel has previous experience in the gaming industry having also invested in Playfish, which was subsequently sold to Electronic Arts.