Mythical Games, a leader in the growing play-to-earn gaming industry, today announced its acquisition of Polystream, whose interactive streaming platform transforms how real-time 3D content is streamed at scale. Polystream's breakthrough technology seamlessly delivers everything required for outstanding interactive 3D consumer entertainment, enabling gamers and non-gamers alike to instantly engage with the content they love without the need for massive game client downloads. The acquisition follows Mythical's Series C raise in November 2021 of $150m at a $1.25b valuation, led by Andreessen Horowitz, and the announcement of the first developer partners signed to the Mythical Platform.
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Leveraging the Polystream cloud-native infrastructure and its own proprietary economic engine, Mythical aims to decentralize how game publishing works and more fully bridge the gap between blockchain and mainstream gaming. Through Polystream's "extended reality" technology, games and content become more accessible to all players across more devices and platforms. In early tests with Mythical's Blankos Block Party game, a full 4GB game client was reduced to a 5MB PC client and downloaded in a matter of seconds. This technology enables more players on more devices to nearly instantly enjoy the game and ensures the game is always current without needing any additional updates when content changes.
"Over the last few years Mythical has grown to one of the largest gaming communities utilizing player-owned economies in video games. With this growth, we have seen increasing interest every month from non-traditional gamers and consumers wanting to be in immersive 3D game worlds. This new player demographic is not always the same as the 'hardcore gamers' we have seen before in PC and console, but very much want to interact and transact in these worlds," said John Linden, CEO of Mythical Games. "I believe the combination of the Mythical Platform and Polystream's revolutionary approach to command streaming fulfills massive components of the web3 ideology referred to as the 'Metaverse'. Mythical now has not only the economic engine but a proprietary, patented streaming tech stack to deliver these incredible 3D worlds in a matter of seconds across nearly any platform. In addition, Polystream's technology delivers this experience on CPU cloud hardware, allowing us to scale faster, and at a fraction of the cost of cloud streaming platforms."
Polystream's headquarters in Guildford, UK will provide Mythical with a European hub that will become the epicenter for cloud-native, blockchain-based technology and games, and Polystream co-founders Bruce Grove and Adam Billyard will become part of the senior leadership team.
"Our mission, from day one, was to disrupt everything we know about cloud native gaming. I can't express how excited I am today that now, as part of Mythical Games, our platform will bridge the gap between blockchain-based technology and millions of consumers, bringing the benefits of NFT gaming to an even larger stage via accessible mass-market games," said Bruce Grove, co-founder and CEO of Polystream. "We've been following Mythical for a long time, and they share our vision of a metaverse that not only hands ownership of IP back to the creators and the users, but importantly, makes it fun. I'm so proud of all my team for never giving up on building the impossible, and we can't wait to start working with our new friends and colleagues at Mythical."
The acquisition of Polystream brings the total number of Mythical employees to over 200, and the company, named one of Inc.'s 2021 Best Places to Work, is continuing to hire for roles globally. For a listing of open positions, please visit: mythicalgames.com/careers.
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