PlaySafe ID — a platform for players that retains cheaters, hackers, bots, and predators out of video games — has raised $1.12M (€1 million) in pre-seed funding.
The goals is to deliver belief, equity, and accountability to gaming communities, with out compromising participant privateness or freedom.
The spherical was led by Early Sport Ventures, with participation from Hartmann Capital and Overwolf. The raised capital will gasoline fast growth and strategic platform integrations, as the corporate gears up for a significant go-to-market push and targets 250,000+ customers within the coming months.
“This round gives us the firepower to move fast, expand our world-class team, and partner with games that want the most fair and safe environment for players to enjoy,” mentioned Andrew Wailes, CEO of PlaySafe ID, in a press release. “This is now more important than ever before. With cheating in games as a mass-epidemic that ruins fun for players daily, and the Online Safety Act ushering in long overdue requirements for child protection in gaming, PlaySafe ID’s mission to safeguard gamers isn’t just relevant – it’s now essential for compliance and the future of global gaming.”
Constructed with a privacy-first mindset, PlaySafe ID points a verified, nameless, and game-agnostic digital ID that proves a person is actual and hasn’t been caught dishonest or being inappropriate to youngsters in video games. These are core issues that proceed to erode on-line experiences throughout video games.
PlaySafe ID has raised $1.12 million.
By providing a single, safe identification layer, the platform empowers each builders and communities to implement honest play throughout titles, with out sacrificing participant anonymity, or the open and artistic nature of video games.
Early Sport Ventures, which led the spherical, is thought for backing early-stage frontier tech. “We believe PlaySafeID is building the trust layer for gaming—and beyond. In a world where AI and anonymity are eroding safety and fairness, PlaySafeID restores balance with identity, transparency, and accountability,” mentioned Cristian Munteanu, managing accomplice at Early Sport Ventures, in a press release. “PlaySafeID builds a network-effects flywheel. Once a gamer is verified through PlaySafeID, that identity becomes portable across games, platforms, and genres. The more developers adopt it, the more valuable it becomes to players—and vice versa. Eventually, the verified identity becomes a default layer of the gaming stack, just like your Steam account or your Xbox Live profile. It’s a winner-takes-all kind of play.”
Andrew Wailes is CEO of PlaySafe ID.
Hartmann Capital, an funding agency targeted on rising digital ecosystems, additionally participated in Playsafe ID’s pre-seed spherical.
“Gaming has quickly become the new social center of our world, with over 3 billion active gamers globally. Despite its immense social and economic value, the gaming ecosystem remains largely ungoverned. Accountability is fragmented across platforms, allowing bad actors to evade consequences by simply creating new accounts or migrating between games,” mentioned Felix Hartmann, managing accomplice at Hartmann Capital in a press release. “Playsafe introduces a judicial system for the digital world—ensuring accountability, safety, and fairness in online spaces that have grown increasingly toxic and uninhabitable. As a universal authority beyond any single game or even nation, Playsafe establishes a digital rule of law across multiplayer platforms worldwide.”
PlaySafe ID is at the moment in integration talks with a number of main gaming platforms, with first partnerships set to launch later this yr.
Origins
PlaySafeID restores stability with identification, transparency, and accountability.
In a message to GamesBeat, Wailes mentioned his inspiration for the corporate cae from his lifelong love for gaming.
“I truly love the competition and challenge, the social side, the amazing worlds and games that we all get to play in. Gaming is special to me, and always has been. Unfortunately, gaming has changed,” Wailes mentioned. “This journey started with me and my friends all getting frustrated at the amount of cheaters we were encountering across literally everything we played. It just seemed that there were more than ever, and everyone that I know was having the same experience.”
He felt like his pastime was being eroded.
“One day, one of my best friends made a joke: ‘Hey Andrew, you work in tech and gaming. Just fix this for us’. I laughed and replied – ‘Yeah sure, I’ll just fix cheating in all games lol. Hold my beer’,” Wailes mentioned. “Although it was a jokey exchange, it stayed with me. I didn’t like what was happening to something I loved. I knew gaming could be better, because it used to be. I really did want to solve this problem.”
He thought of it and felt like all roads pointed to the identical drawback.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re caught cheating, because you just create a new account and come straight back in,” he mentioned.
He mentioned that is additionally what offers cheat builders an unfair benefit over sport devs and anti-cheat options. In the event that they get caught, they primarily have a limiteless variety of lives to maintain coming again in, to determine methods to replace the cheats, and to change into undetectable once more. The countless cycle of cat and mouse continues, with gamers struggling.
“Additionally, after becoming a dad for the first time I started to hear the horror stories regarding the volume of child grooming and abuse in games. Then I had a penny drop moment that both cheating and grooming have the same root cause; it doesn’t matter if you’re caught. Just create a new account and get straight back in,” Wailes mentioned. “Meaningful accountability is the missing element.”
And so his inspiration was the thought that gaming may very well be higher, extra honest, and extra enjoyable for everybody.
“The thought that children should be able to explore these amazing worlds without the risks they face today. I want gaming to be better, so I’ll do my best to be the bastion for players, children, parents, and games. PlaySafe ID is my solution to make this a reality,” he mentioned.
The staff has seven folks from place equivalent to Google and Jagex. Now it plans to broaden.
Wailes bought began in his free time in early 2023 in Cammbridge, United Kingdom.
“I spent about six months just exploring the problem, how a solution could work for gamers, and chatting about it with mates,” he mentioned. “I then put together a prototype/proof of concept and got a few rented game servers to run some tests. From this success and the reception we had from gamers, I decided that this really had a shot at being a real solution that could truly make gaming better. July 2024 is when I decided to focus on PlaySafe ID full time and to build a rockstar team to turn this into a real venture.”
The way it works
Players can declare a PlaySafe ID, and so they can solely ever have one.
Wailes mentioned that on the floor, it’s fairly easy. Players can declare a PlaySafe ID, and so they can solely ever have one.
“They create an account with us then do a quick verification. This is powered by Onfido who are our phenomenal partner, and giants in the (know your customer) KYC and identity verification industry. They’re also based out of the UK so they’re governed by UK and EU data privacy law and compliance standards,” he mentioned.
He added, “We use a zero-knowledge verification with Onfido. They manage the verification for us, and only notify us if the check was successful and it’s the first time they’ve seen this person. This process means that PlaySafe ID doesn’t have to see or store any data, documents or biometrics from the verification, whilst ensuring that every user is legitimate.”
Customers join their PlaySafe ID to video games and providers. The sport calls our API to ask in the event that they’re in a position to play. If sure, they’ll play. If no, they’ll’t. It’s so simple as that.
“In regards to issuing penalties and bans; game developers notify us of any violations: cheating, botting, or child grooming/sexualization of children (CSAM/CSEA). We have some tech on our backend that looks at the trust score of the developer sending the violation, the context of the game, the context of the violation, and then we’re able to make decisions about issuing a penalty to the PlaySafe ID,” he mentioned. “This process and tech means we can minimize false positives whilst enforcing meaningful penalties across games and services. Lastly, we have some cool security features.”
He added,”Clearly a PlaySafe ID is a beneficial factor, and we wish to be certain that customers can’t have their accounts stolen and that individuals can’t commerce PlaySafe IDs. If we see suspicious exercise, we are able to quickly droop entry till the person takes one other selfie that matches the unique they used to confirm themselves. This is identical kind of workflow that banks use earlier than permitting you to ship cash. Once more, that is dealt with totally by Onfido.”
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