Mobile game maker Bling Financial lands $350,000 investment

Bling Financial Inc. of Irvine recently raised a $350,000 investment; the round is still open.

Backers of the mobile game maker include crypto-focused venture capital firms BlockTower Capital, Gumi Cryptos and Wave Financial.

Bling Financial was created in 2017 by Amy Wan. She is an alumna of the University of Southern California Gould School of Law, and the former founder of Bootstrap Legal, a platform designed to help attorneys draft real estate syndication offering documents that merged with New York-based law firm Sosnow & Associates in late 2019.

Bling Financial has developed a number of mobile games, such as Bitcoin Solitaire and Bitcoin Pop, that reward users for game play and milestones with bitcoin. All of its games are 100% free to download with no in-app purchases.

The company said it has over four million users. It reported paying out over 500 billion gaming points worth more than $1 million in Bitcoin in 2020.

Gaggle Studios has closed a $2 million seed round of financing from New York-based venture firm Makers Fund.

The company, based in Irvine and Toronto, is the developer of Goose Goose Duck, an online game that requires players (geese) to work together and catch meddlesome intruders (ducks) to keep their spaceship in tip-top shape during an interplanetary quest.

The game is inspired by Among Us, an online multiplayer social deduction game, and aims to “fill a gap in the video game marketplace” where there is “a lack of frictionless, integrated voice and video-chat gaming,” according to the company.

Goose Goose Duck launched a free, early access version of its game on Steam last month. It is available for groups of up to 16 and integrates with chat platforms such as Discord.

New funds will support game development and team expansion for the company, which started in mid-2019.

The company was founded by CEO Shawn Fischtein and CTO Simon Chu, the latter of whom is also CEO of Irvinebased virtual reality software maker Escape VR.