Gaming infrastructure company Edgegap has announced the closing of a $1 million seed financing round to reduce lag in multiplayer video games. The funding round was led by Colorado venture capital fund Konvoy Ventures, with participation from Hiro Capital.
Edgegap raises $1 million
“As someone who has been working in esports and games for almost eight years, I love Edgegap’s technology because it goes beyond esports, right to the very foundation of engaging multiplayer gamers,” wrote Spike Laurie, Esports Venture Director at Hiro Capital. “As a gamer, you need to be confident that your actions are acknowledged and handled quickly and correctly by the game server.”
The Montreal-based startup will use the funding toward building new gaming infrastructure – a solution that will allow video game studios to reduce lag and improve player experience. Led by former Cisco and SAP alumni, the team will focus on Edge Computing. This concept improves response times and lowers latency by bringing computation and storage closer to the requests. This is often implemented through the deployment of multiple edge nodes to decrease the distance between data centers and the end-user.
Many video games traditionally host their servers with dedicated servers through public cloud infrastructure like Amazon Web Services. However, video game studios that use Edge Computing will instead use multiple small servers instead of just a few larger ones. This is similar to how Amazon owns multiple warehouses in the regions of each state, which allows them to increase efficiency and facilitate quicker shipping.
Led by Konvoy Ventures, Hiro Capital
“Edgegap’s solution provides meaningful value for game publishers and developers by improving a core retention mechanic, resulting directly in a more engaged player base,” continued Laurie.
When joining a multiplayer game, the matchmaking system can leverage Edgegap to determine the best host location for each player. With hundreds and eventually tens of thousands of edge nodes, players will no longer have to deal with slow response times. In addition, video game studios can decrease server costs and let Edgegap handle infrastructure management instead.
