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SAN FRANCISCO – Mar. 17, 2022 – Dorian, the women-first game platform for creators, streamers and players, has raised $14M in Series A funding, led by The Raine Group, with participation from March Gaming, London Venture Partners, VGames, Gaingels and Graham & Walker. Dorian is the first game platform founded and led by a woman, and built with female creators and players in mind. The funding will be used to expand its cloud-based creation tools and livestreaming support to ensure that making, sharing and collaborating on Dorian is fun, easy and accessible for creators working together remotely.
Led by native Ukrainian founder Julia Palatovska, Dorian was created with the goal of furthering women as creators and as participants in the global games industry. The platform already has more than 3,500 interactive games produced by a nearly all-female creator community that embraces respect and inclusivity. The platform is breaking down distribution and monetization barriers facing millions of fiction writers today, allowing writers to forge direct relationships with passionate fans and make money in a fast-growing game format. With more than 250 of creators on Dorian today, those who had previously been writing fiction and fanfiction as a hobby without any financial returns, have started generating revenue for the first time by turning their stories into games. In the short time since the platform enabled monetization, some creators are already earning more than $15,000 in annualized revenue directly from their fans.
“The expression of creative energy on our platform in the last twelve months has been incredible,” Julia Palatovska, co-founder and CEO, Dorian. “We moved quickly to foster new talent by giving them the tools to turn fiction into games, host interactive social livestreams, and become better at their craft based on feedback from players and advanced data insights that are available to all Dorian creators for free. And now, with creators on every continent, we are already seeing professional-level work from amateur teams across the world.”
Dorian’s data shows that the platform is realizing its mission to pave the way for female game creators and streamers to reach and engage audiences in unprecedented ways. Game platforms to date have been male-dominated, while Dorian has ~100% creators and players who identify as women, with 50% people of color. Dorian is the first game streaming platform that has built a community and culture to attract nearly 100% female streamers.
“We couldn’t be more excited by Julia and the team’s vision for the company,” said Todd Rosoff, Partner, Raine. “In Dorian, we see an innovative creator platform focused on the large and fast-growing market for fan fiction, a platform that harnesses the power of user-generated content and gaming to enable creators to bring their stories to life for fans everywhere. Dorian is not only democratizing content creation and distribution, it is unlocking monetization for creators by equipping them with the tools and analytics needed to deliver the most engaging interactive entertainment experiences to fans over time.”
Giving authors control over monetization and facilitating collaboration with other creators and fans is a priority for Dorian. Game authors on Dorian host their own interactive live shows and also love seeing that their games can be streamed by others, which results in a collaboration between game writers and streamers.
Dorian recently announced a new feature that allows authors of the games to determine and collect a revenue share when their games are streamed by someone else on the platform. Next, Dorian will launch an art marketplace, and enable artists to collect royalties from the games using their art.
To expand the platform further, Dorian is forging partnerships with owners of established IP to broaden the diversity of content on the platform while allowing IP partners to tap into the massive market for fan fiction. Recently, the company partnered with Lionsgate to launch The Blair Witch franchise on Dorian, prompting fans to build their own interactive games based on the bestselling IP. In the near future, the team at Dorian will reveal partnerships with other entertainment brands, artists, and creators to enable fans to produce games based on their favorite IPs and grow their audiences through these collaborations.
After this round, The Raine Group’s Partner, Todd Rosoff, will join Dorian’s Board of Directors and Vice President Kenny Lee will become a Board Observer. Raine’s investment is a part of its dedicated gaming investment platform. Raine has been investing in the gaming sector since its inception in 2008, with early investments in DraftKings, Huuuge Games, Jackpocket, and Mythical Games, among other companies.
Dorian has joined multiple tech companies in supporting the Ukrainian people fighting for their freedom and has donated to two organizations, Come Back Alive, which is supporting the defense efforts in Ukraine and 1K Project, which is directing relief to the growing number of Ukrainian families that have been impacted by the war. The company is being proactive in hiring talent from Ukraine who fled the country or want to relocate once it is possible.
To learn more about Dorian and to sign up, download Dorian here.
