Curse Secures $16M in Venture Capital, Debt Funding

Curse, a VoIP service provider for online gamers, announced this week that it has secured an additional $16 million in funding from financial backers.

This time around, the latest commitments secured $10 million in round B venture capital funding and another $6 million in debt funding. This brings its total funding to date up to $22 million. The company recently launched Curse Voice as an addition to the lineup of community management and live streaming services it offers.

Gamasutra noted in its analysis of the recent funding that the VoIP service has only been in beta for two weeks, but in that time it has picked up more than a million users. Curse describes its voice chat as made easy by not requiring users to purchase credits or subscribe to specific servers. Users can also share sessions with friends through a link. And the service reportedly hides personally identifying information from other players who connect through Curse Voice.

TMC noted previously a comment made by Curse CEO Hubert Thieblot about the company's reason for creating the its voice chat: "We addressed frustrations that we had with the market. We felt like the gaming VoIP market hadn't evolved for years," Thieblot said. "We've always been about creating and supporting communities and allowing people to share information together in a way that makes their game more enjoyable. For competitive games and competitive gamers, we believe that Curse Voice was the missing piece of the communication puzzle that will do just that."

Many video games are coming equipped with native support for VoIP through their respective consoles. A notable example is the VoIP support enabled with the most recent installment of Battlefield that allows players to complete commander-to-squad communications.

Services such as Curse can span multiple games and may be invaluable to players who engage in games which offer no native VoIP support. It also includes a number features that make the service easy to use and can potentially hide a player's identity should he or she feel the need to remain anonymous.