2020 was a hard year, which is perhaps why more than 10 million people chose to escape to virtual hangout space Rec Room.
Rec Room, which was created by virtual reality gaming startup Against Gravity, announced the user-acquisition milestone in a blog post on Thursday. In addition, the company revealed that it raised $20 million in a Series C funding round led by Seattle-based Madrona Venture Group. This comes a year and a half after the company announced its Series B round.
Rec Room is a virtual playground for people to create, play games and hang out together. The virtual world consists of about four million unique rooms designed by both the gaming studio and its players. More than a million players have created their own rooms, and the company says around 20,000 new rooms are added every day.
Many of those rooms show off just how creative Rec Room players are. There are ancient Greek-style monuments, ski mountains, game show stages, deserts, and spooky mansions, among other unique scenes. Many of these spaces are interactive, so people can enter with friends and play mini-games together — or just use it as a space to talk to people online.
“2020 hasn’t been the easiest of years, but the positivity and creativity of the Rec Room community has been a real bright spot,” Rec Room CEO and co-founder Nick Fajt wrote in the blog post. “It’s been so wonderful waking up each morning to check rec.net and see a collection of new rooms, creations and events to explore. The endless number of friendly people to meet and creative places to visit made quarantine a bit more bearable, and we have all of you to thank for building a wonderful community.”
The company says it has a handful of new developments in store for 2021, including new features and new tools for creators. It is also creating a $1 million creator compensation program for 2021, which will pay some Rec Room creators for the rooms they make.
In addition, Rec Room says it’ll use the new funding to scale up its Seattle-based team. The company is currently hiring for more than a dozen open roles across design, software development, HR and other departments.
