Monday 10 August 2015 10:27 am

Super Evil Megacorp raises $26m to fund global expansion of Vainglory video game

Super Evil Megacorp has commanded $26m (£16.8m) of investment to fund its plans of world domination.

But alas, it's not a dastardly group of comic book villains: Super Evil Megacorp is a video game publisher with its sights set on ruling the eSports world through its phenomenally popular Vainglory game for mobile platforms.

Today it announced a new "International Premier League" for the handheld game with a prize pool of $70,000 on offer to players from South Korea, Europe, North America and China.

The competition will be broadcast on prime-time TV in South Korea and produced in conjunction with OnGameNet – the established experts in eSports broadcasting.

With roughly 100m fans around the world, competitive video gaming is booming and with Vainglory, Super Evil Megacorp is betting touch-screen platforms are the "sport's" next frontier.

Adam Valkin, managing director at General Catalyst Partners, which contributed to the $26m funding round, commented:

Nine months ago, Vainglory was a bold experiment to perfect the Moba genre for touch screens. Today it is emerging as a global competitive platform, with its own star athletes, a league broadcast on TV in Korea, and millions of players around the world playing the game for over an hour each day.

Super Evil is proving that the future of eSports is mobile, and that Vainglory is poised to become the next frontier.

Like the most popular eSports games such as Dota 2 and League of Legends, Vainglory is a multiplayer online battle arena. After some of its millions of users began organising their own competitions, Super Evil Megacorp noticed the opportunity and began hosting its own official tournaments earlier this year.

The company also announced today that it was teaming up with Chinese PC gaming company Giant Interactive to officially launch the game in the region.