Scopely

Scopely is a touchscreen entertainment network founded in 2011 based in Los Angeles.

History
Scopely was founded in 2011 by Walter Driver, Ankur Bulsara, Eric Futoran and Eytan Elbaz. In February 2013, Scopely announced the first six partner studios in its developer network. While working with one of Scopely's first partners, Scopely boosted New Zealand Studio Rocket Jump’s Mini Golf MatchUp game to over 10M downloads one month. As of 2013, Scopely had 80 employees. In 2014, Scopely brought in former Disney Executives Javier Ferreira as Chief Operating Officer and Tim O'Brien as Chief Revenue Officer.

Through its developer program, Scopely partners with game developers and global entertainment companies to bring distribution and monetization technology to free to play games. To date, Scopely has released nine games, with Dice with Buddies and Mini Golf MatchUp being early successes. Scopely has had four consecutive #1 iPhone games on the US download chart. In May 2015, Scopely signed a multi-year strategic partnership with Digit Games, Ireland's largest games developer. In August 2015, Scopely ranked #9 on Inc.'s List of the 5000 Fastest-Growing Companies in America. In October 2017, it opened a studio in Barcelona.

Games
In January 2012, Scopely launched a #4 game in the App Store, Dice with Buddies. In July 2012, Scopely launched its first fully internal game which hit the #5 spot in the App Store, Jewels with Buddies. In October 2012, Scopely launched Bubble Galaxy With Buddies, which reached the number one overall app in the App Store.

In April 2013, Scopely launched Mini Golf MatchUp. The game was number one in the Apple App Store in 28 countries and the number one app on both the iPhone and the iPad in the U.S. In September 2013, Scopely launched a #1 overall app in the App Store, Wordly. Wordly was the first game with single-player mode developed by Scopely. In November 2013, Scopely launched the only officially licensed Skee-ball game, Skee-ball Arcade which reached the #1 overall App in the App Store.

In June 2014, Scopely launched Slots Vacation, a top-50 grossing game in the App Store. In July 2014, Scopely acquired Space Inch and Andy Ross’ Disco Bees and added Make it Rain to Scopely’s ad network. In April 2015, Scopely partnered with Hasbro to launch the only officially licensed Yahtzee game Yahtzee With Buddies on iOS, Android and the Apple Watch. Yahtzee with Buddies saw 1 million downloads in the first four days and over 10,000 downloads an hour.

In August 2015, Scopely partnered with The Walking Dead series creator Robert Kirkman and Skybound Entertainment Skybound Entertainment to create The Walking Dead: Road to Survival, the first free-to-play mobile game based on the wildly popular graphic novels. The game saw 4M downloads in a week, hit the Top 25 Grossing Chart on the Apple Store and became the 6th consecutive #1 game released by Scopely.

In 2017, Scopely's The Walking Dead: Road to Survival experienced programming-induced glitches which affected player usage and brought wait times of close to 8 hours in some instances. Scopely's response was to apologize and offer compensation which, in a few cases, was deemed of inconsequential value. An apology was issued by Road to Survival’s general manager Albert Wei and Scopely senior VP of products Jori Pearsall which read, in part:"You’ve told us that we are not consistently delivering on the kind of game you deserve, and that we're not communicating as well as we should about the game, the updates, and the player experience. Your concerns are real. We’ve missed the mark and we need to own it."

Also in 2017, Scopely launched the WWE themed match-3 game WWE Champions, which features daily and monthly events and the ability (once level 5 is attained) to battle other players in tag-team battles.

Funding
In 2013, Scopely raised a seed round of $8.5 million. Investors included: New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Anthem Venture Partners, The Chernin Group, Felicis Ventures, Greycroft Partners, former Yahoo CEO Terry Semel, TechStars CEO David Cohen, Factual CEO Gil Elbaz, Buddy Media CEO Michael Lazerow, ShoeDazzle CEO Brian Lee, Burstly CEO Evan Rifkin, LiveRamp CEO Auren Hoffman, Demand Media President Michael Blend and former Techstars NY Managing Director David Tisch along with numerous other angel investors.

In 2014, Scopely raised a $35 million Series A Funding Round  from investors including Evolution Media Capital, Highland Capital Partners, SVP of Media at GoPro Zander Lurie, CEO of Dun and Bradstreet Credibility Corp Jeff Stibel, Former CEO of AT&T David Dorman, and CEO of Oculus VR Brendan Iribe, amongst others. Existing investors participating included Greycroft Partners, The Chernin Group, Anthem Venture Partners and Sands Capital. As of 2015, Scopely has raised $43M.