Top Games Startups in 2026

The Verse: Building Games That Heal **THE VERSE OVERVIEW**: The Verse creates games, experiences, and rituals that uplift humanity. **WHO WE ARE:** The Verse is a global community of inspired gamers, developers, designers, scientists, artists, visionaries, teachers, and students who join together to passionately contribute their wide-ranging expertise to invent experiences that enhance human flourishing. **MISSION:** Our mission is to collaboratively create digital therapeutics and experiences that are playful, embodied, and ritual-enriched, that invite co-creation and foster participation and that enhance health, improve well-being and raise consciousness.

Founded in 2011, scopely is fueled by a world-class team and a proprietary technology platform that supports one of the most diversified mobile games portfolios in the west. with expertise in game design and development, live services, marketing, analytics and more, we are dedicated to creating engaging mobile experiences that players return to for years to come.

Skillz is the leading marketplace platform that helps players discover mobile games and compete against other players around the world. At the same time, the company helps developers build multi-million dollar franchises by enabling social competition in their games. Leveraging its patented technology, Skillz has hosted over 2 billion tournaments entries for 30 million mobile players worldwide and distributes over $60 million in prizes each month. Headquartered in San Francisco and Portland, the company is backed by leading venture capitalists, media companies, and professional sports leagues and franchises including the investment arm of the NFL and owners of the New England Patriots, Milwaukee Bucks, New York Mets and Sacramento Kings. Skillz has also earned recognition as one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies, CNBC’s Disruptor 50, Forbes’ Next Billion-Dollar Startups, and the #1 fastest-growing company in America on the Inc. 5000.

Dapper Labs, the company behind CryptoKitties, NBA Top Shot, and the Flow blockchain, uses blockchain technology to bring NFTs and new forms of digital engagement to fans around the world paving the way to a more open and inclusive digital world starting with games and entertainment. Since it was founded in 2018, Dapper Labs has given consumer enthusiasts a real stake in the game by bringing them closer to the brands they love, building engaged and exciting communities for them to contribute to, and producing new pathways for them to become creators themselves. Dapper Labs' current studio partners include the NBA, NBPA, WNBA, WNBPA, LaLiga, NFL, NFLPA, Warner Music Group, Ubisoft, Genies, and UFC. We have raised over $600M from leading and notable investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Coatue, Union Square Ventures, Venrock, Google Ventures (GV), Samsung, and the founders of Dreamworks, Reddit, Coinbase, Zynga, and AngelList, among others. For more on Dapper Labs, visit dapperlabs.com Flow is a Web3 platform powering the next generation of games, apps and digital assets chosen for its combination of scalability and usability for consumers and developers. Flow is the only layer-one blockchain originally created by a team that has consistently delivered industry-leading consumer-scale Web3 experiences including CryptoKitties, Dapper, and NBA Top Shot. Flow boasts a rich ecosystem of top entertainment brands, development studios, and venture-backed startups. Flow ecosystem partners include global IP brands like Warner Music, Ubisoft, NBA, NFL, LaLiga, and UFC; e-commerce leaders Shopify, leading game developers, including Animoca Brands, Sumo Digital, and nWay; and many leaders in the crypto space such as Circle, Binance, and Rarible. For more on Flow, visit flow.com.

Headquartered in New York City, Take-Two Interactive Software is a leading developer, publisher and marketer of interactive entertainment for consumers around the globe. Our company develops and publishes products principally through its wholly-owned labels Rockstar Games and 2K, as well as its Private Division label and Social Point, a leading developer of mobile games. Some of our largest hits include the Civilization series, NBA2K, Bioshock Infinite as well as many other titles throughout the years.

Volley builds the best voice-controlled games and entertainment experiences for Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, smartphones, and Fire TVs. Popular Volley voice games include Song Quiz, Jeopardy!, and The Price Is Right. Our voice apps are used by millions of people every month. We believe voice control will become the main way people access entertainment in their bedrooms, kitchens, living rooms, and cars, and our goal is to become the "Netflix of Voice" for this emerging category of devices. Volley was founded by Max Child and James Wilsterman in 2016. We're a 60+ person hybrid remote/in-person company, headquartered in the Hayes Valley neighborhood of San Francisco. While we work to make home entertainment more accessible and engaging, we like to have fun along the way, with team lunches, Friday happy hours, and very active #food and #pets slack channels. If any of this sounds fun to you (we promise it is), come join us! Read more about Volley's culture and mission here: volleythat.com/post/volley-mission-culture-and-what-we-create

Unity is the world’s leading platform for creating and operating real-time 3D (RT3D) content. Creators, ranging from game developers to artists, architects, automotive designers, filmmakers, and others, use Unity to make their imaginations come to life. Unity’s platform provides a comprehensive set of software solutions to create, run and monetize interactive, real-time 2D and 3D content for mobile phones, tablets, PCs, consoles, and augmented and virtual reality devices. The company’s 1,400+ person research and development team keeps Unity at the forefront of development by working alongside partners to ensure optimized support for the latest releases and platforms. Apps developed by Unity creators were downloaded more than three billion times per month in 2019 on more than two billion unique devices. For more information, please visit unity.com. Download Unity: unity3d.com/get-unity We're hiring! Visit our careers site: careers.unity.com For support, please email: [email protected] Check us out on our other social channels: Twitter: twitter.com/unity3d Facebook: facebook.com/unity3d LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/unity-technologies Instagram: instagram.com/unitytechnologies

We launched Riot Games in 2006 to develop, publish, and support games made by players, for players. In 2009, we released our debut title, League of Legends. League has gone on to be the most-played PC game in the world and a key driver of the explosive growth of esports. Players are the foundation of our community and it’s for them that we continue to evolve the League experience both in and out of game. Founded by Brandon Beck and Marc Merrill, and currently under the leadership of CEO Nicolo Laurent, we're headquartered in Los Angeles, California, and have 2,500+ Rioters in 20+ offices worldwide.

Wildlife Studios is one of the 10 largest mobile gaming companies in the world. Founded in Brazil in 2011, our studio has grown to become a truly global organization. We have offices in the United States, Brazil, Argentina and Ireland, and are still expanding. Today, our portfolio of over 70 games engages billions of players around the world. We develop and publish mobile games that will be remembered and shared for generations.

As a company, and as individuals, we value integrity, honesty, openness, personal excellence, constructive self-criticism, continual self-improvement, and mutual respect. We are committed to our customers and partners and have a passion for technology. We take on big challenges, and pride ourselves on seeing them through. We hold ourselves accountable to our customers, shareholders, partners, and employees by honoring our commitments, providing results, and striving for the highest quality.