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Balancy has raised $700,000 in investment from game industry veterans to improve game live operations.
Cyprus-based Balancy hopes to transform live operations and improve monetization for game companies. It will use the money to fuel the growth of Balancy’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform.
Seth Sivak, former vice president of development of World of Warcraft and one of the investors in this round, said in a statement, “Most mobile games today are run as a live service. Studios spend a tremendous amount of resources on the engineering aspects of live operations versus the monetization side, which can bring significant lifetime value (LTV) uplift. I am excited to see the unique technology behind Balancy that accelerates live service game development, opens freedom of experimentation, and, as a result, boosts games’ LTV.”
Balancy was founded in 2022 by Pavel Ignatov and Andrei Apanasik. It has quickly gained traction by partnering with over 100 titles, including those developed by industry leaders like Lion Studios. The startup’s SaaS platform is designed to assist game studios in efficiently running and monetizing live games, offering a significant shift from the traditional approach.
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Ignatov and Apnasik share a deep-rooted history in the gaming industry. Having met as teenagers while playing World of Warcraft, they later cofounded their own studio called Unnyhog, which achieved YCombinator alumni status. Now, with Balancy, they aim to extend their expertise to help other game developers accelerate their growth.
In 2023, Julia Iljuk joined the team, bringing her SaaS expertise to the project. The company witnessed an impressive 15-fold increase in monthly recurring revenue (MRR) last year, reaching a significant break-even milestone.
Ignatov, who understands the challenges of running a studio firsthand, said in a statement, “We aim to empower promising midsize and smaller studios to navigate the competition amid an increasingly consolidated market and the highest CPI (Cost per Install) numbers in mobile history.”
Balancy seeks to level the playing field for studios of all sizes, allowing them to scale live ops and test new monetization strategies in real-time. This eliminates the need for lengthy app releases and empowers developers to generate more revenue from their player base.
The current funding round has attracted notable industry veterans, including Max Kamenkou (CEO of Splitmetrics), Radostin Petrov (founder of Zariba Group and Casualino), Sergei Kovalenko (CEO of Vention and Braavo Capital), and Seth Sivak.
Ignatov revealed that Balancy plans to close the fundraising soon and is actively seeking a lead investor. This investment follows a pre-seed round from Andrei Avsievich, who has a track record of cofounding and investing in startups later acquired by major players like Pinterest, Farfetch, and ServiceNow.
“Investor support propels us toward ambitious roadmap milestones, including innovative ML/AI monetization solutions and expanding the technology across various engines beyond Unity,” said Ignatov.
The founders invite potential partners to join them and look forward to meeting industry professionals at GDC 2024.
The company started in 2022 and it has nine people in Cyprus, Spain, the U.S. and Lithuania.
Before Balancy, the founders created and released their multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game as participants in the YCombinator incubator. One major mistake they made was prioritizing the development of internal tools for the game instead of getting it to the market quickly. This allowed big-budget competitors like League of Legends to dominate the market, ultimately leading to the closure of their project. With Balancy, the founders want to help other midsize and smaller studios to get a competitive advantage on today’s highly consolidated market.
Of course, fans aren’t always on board with an emphasis on games-as-a-service when it comes to big companies that can choose to make triple-A single-player games. That was the case with Warner Bros. executives saying they were considering games-as-a-service in the wake of the disappointment of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.
Regarding that, Balancy said, “Warner Bros.’s decision (while it can be perceived as controversial in the gaming community) is a clear signal that service games with the correct implementation of LiveOps can bring in more money in the long term. It’s too expensive to develop single-player triple-A games right now. However, going into service games does not guarantee success if the monetization part is poorly implemented. That’s why at Balancy we’re dedicated to providing developers with more than just tools. Our focus extends to offering expert guidance and providing effective frameworks that form the foundation of our platform.”
Regarding rivals like Beamable, Balancy said that solutions like Beamable (the same as LootLocker, Metaplay, and others) focus on the backend of live services to simplify the daily lives of engineers on the team. By contrast, Balancy is a Miro for monetization. It is a workspace for game designers and monetization managers that provides a set of tools for fine-tuning game balance and monetization through LiveOps—special offers, game events, segmentation, A/B Tests, etc. This allows game developers to create more engaging experiences, tailor games for individual players, and increase player retention and monetization, Balancy said.
Asked how a company can make an improvement in monetization with a live update, Balancy said, “Imagine you’ve launched a special offer in your game, but it’s not performing as expected. Analytics reveal low conversion rates, mainly because some player groups find the pricing too high. It might be wise to offer discounts to such groups of players to boost conversions — while not lowering pricing for payers. Typically, you’d have to ask your engineering team to make adjustments and wait for the next app release to implement the discounted offer for players who didn’t purchase the initial one. However, with Balancy, a game designer can open the offer in Visual Scripting, add a discounted option, and simply hit “deploy” to make the changes instantly available in the game. You can then monitor its performance in real-time using the Balancy dashboard.”
In one case, Balancy showed a 37% increase in conversion and 50% increase in average revenue per paying user.
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