iPhone Game House ngmoco Raises $25 Million Series C, Buys Freeverse

Neil Young, the CEO of iPhone game startup ngmoco , wants to "amass enough scale" to accelerate "away from the pack." He just raised a $25 million series C round and acquired Freeverse , another top iPhone game developer, to help ngmoco keep moving forward. The round was led by Institutional Venture Partners, and existing shareholders Kleiner Perkins, Norwest Venture Parters, and Maples Investments also participated. The new round brings the total raised to $40.6 million. The startup consistently pumps out new iPhone games which have been downloaded millions of times. Two of its games alone— TouchPets and Eliminate —have been installed 9 million times, and hundreds of thousands of people play every day. Last year, ngmoco switched to free-to-play games with in-app purchases for virtual goods through its Plus+ social game network.