OMGPOP Raises $10.1M To Expand Gaming Roster

Casual game developer OMGPOP has raised close to $10M in its second round of funding led by Rho Ventures, Japan’s Softbank, Spark Capital and others. More after the jump.

The company started as a flash web game portal with social twists. As a social networking site, OMGPOP eventually diversified into game development – creating high quality games and becoming a true casual multiplayer gaming destination. OMGPOP primarily derives revenues from ads and virtual currency sales but has been focusing strongly on partnerships as well, securing IMVU and myYearbook as places to seed their games. OMGPOP wasn’t too eager on distributing its games on third party platforms like Facebook but they know better than to ignore it.

OMGPOP released CupCake Corner on Facebook – a restaurant management game that came in to fruition as a result of a lot of market research. Most of the research was in the form of asking people on Facebook using fb ad campaigns. The game now has over 1.6 MMAUs and experiencing growth of nearly 50,000 new users a day. OMGPOP is poised on developing quality games that have higher engagement and we hope they achieve just that.

According to a report by Paidcontent, OMGPOP will be using the new funding to expand its game library and is currently preparing to launch five games for Facebook and iPhone over the next 6 months as well as acquire smaller studios. The company raised $5M last time in a round led by Bessemeber Ventures in March 2009. One of the investors now is Rho Ventures – which also participated in Tapjoy’s latest round of financing.

We’ve covered OMGPOP a significant number of times on SocialTimes.com from its partnership with MyYearbook and IMVU to deeper dialogues with their executive team regarding best practices in distribution and their social platform strategy. Congrats to the team at OMGPOP!