Playgama to step up Web gaming development with $3 million funding 

Playgama, a UAE-based game tech startup aiming to give HTML5 game developers access to the whole web market at once, has raised $3 million in a funding round led by The Open Platform and s16vc. The round is also backed by FJ Labs, The Games Fund, TON Ventures, and Kirill Eves, CEO and Founder of Unlimit. 

The Middle East is emerging as a dynamic hub for the gaming industry, with a rapidly expanding development ecosystem and increasing revenue streams. As of November 2024, the region's gaming market is estimated to reach $6.34 billion, with projections indicating growth to $10.69 billion by 2029, representing a robust CAGR of 11.02%. This growth creates a fertile environment for HTML5 gaming to flourish. 

The Major Gap in the Global Market of Web Games

On the global scale, the HTML5 gaming market is undergoing a renaissance, valued at $23 billion in 2021; it is projected to grow to $32 billion by 2030 and driven by in-game purchases and advertising.

Despite this growth, the market remains fragmented. Unlike centralised hubs like the App Store or Google Play on mobile or Steam and the Epic Games Store on PC, the HTML5 market comprises thousands of standalone playgrounds, as well as non-gaming websites, media, social networks and messengers—both global and region-specific. Even leaders capture only small fractions of the global web gaming audience, and there’s currently no way for developers to access the entire market at once. Playgama aims to change this.

Playgama’s Solution: One Platform To Connect with All Platforms 

Playgama’s vision is to streamline distribution through a "master key" approach, providing developers with a simple and efficient route to tap into all available platforms, languages, and markets, maximising their chances of reaching a large and diverse audience. 

To achieve this, Playgama is creating a full-scale Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) ecosystem that is aimed to provide game developers with all the tools they need to navigate the fragmented web market, enhancing their reach and ROI while freeing them from the hassle of tackling distribution challenges and allowing them to focus on game creation and development.

The platform is designed to give developers access to as many playgrounds, distributors, and other platforms as possible. The open-source “integrate once, reach everywhere” SDK, Playgama Bridge, is at the centre of this ecosystem and has already been used by over a thousand developers. 

The company’s partnership with The Open Platform and TON Ventures is particularly strategic, as Playgama wants to bridge the gap between Web2 and Web3 gaming. Playgama’s proprietary gaming portal already supports play-to-earn mechanics and crypto payments.

Playgama’s founder, Dmitry Kachmar, started the company in 2023 in Dubai, during a sabbatical he took to complete his studies at Harvard Business School. An avid gamer since childhood, he is also a seasoned tech executive with vast expertise in advertising technologies and classifieds. To build Playgama, Kachmar assembled a highly qualified international team of professionals with backgrounds at companies like Miro, Playrix, Easybrain, and Vivid Money. The team is made up of over 30 employees, spanning locations from the US to Indonesia, with the headquarters in Dubai.

Dmitry Kachmar, Founder of Playgama: “We want to transform the web gaming market and empower HTML5 game creators to effortlessly reach audiences they once could only dream of. Currently, Playgama’s distribution network has the potential to reach over 200 million monthly active players—and this is just the beginning. With this funding, we’ll accelerate further improvement of Playgama’s platform for developers, expand our toolkit, and introduce advanced analytics and fintech solutions.”

Andrey Klebanov, Managing Director, The Open Platform: “At The Open Platform, we value Playgama’s commitment to providing HTML5 developers with an end-to-end toolkit for launching games as Telegram mini-apps and browser-based experiences. This approach not only simplifies access to diverse platforms but also opens doors for fintech and crypto innovations—offering developers and players new possibilities in gaming and payments.”