GOTHENBURG, Sweden (Top40 Charts) Hiber, the company behind the popular virtual experience platform HiberWorld, and Ready Player Me, the leading identity platform for games and virtual worlds, have partnered to bring the first major gaming brand to Ready Player Me and HiberWorld users as part of Ready Player Me's recently announced Premium Skins Catalog, enabling the company's developer partners to sell branded avatar customization options and merchandise. Rovio's popular global franchise Angry Birds will be first to enter HiberWorld with a fun 3D experience featuring avatar clothing and hero skins that can be purchased directly in the 3D space.
"Partnering with Ready Player Me to bring these first premium digital avatar assets to our expanding community presents an exciting opportunity to work with Rovio and Angry Birds, a franchise that we love, and know our users will be excited to see," said Michael Yngfors, CEO of Hiber. "Both Rovio and Ready Player Me have been exceptional partners in moving quickly to deliver these assets for sale to our users and we are confident this is just the first of many AAA quality IPs that will come to HiberWorld over the coming year."
"Hiber has been a strong partner for us over the past two years and they are always eager to be pioneers," said Timmu Tõke, Co-Founder & CEO of Ready Player Me. "Their platform is growing and we have had a great collaboration with them as we build out our commercial offerings for games developers and their products. Rovio has also stepped up and is leading the way in terms of IP licensing as we bring the Angry Birds franchise to new audiences and in Hiber's case, via the browser to users all around the world."
"HiberWorld is a compelling platform that will give fans of the Angry Birds a new way to interact with the brand as well as connecting us to a new audience with immersive 3D content," said Katri Chacona, Head of
Brand Licensing at Rovio. "Angry Birds has a global base of active players and fans and we are excited to see what this partnership with Ready Player Me and Hiber brings in terms of delighting our existing fans, as well as growing brand awareness, creating new fans of the franchise, and giving HiberWorld users the ability to express themselves with avatars and branded clothing items utilizing our brand."
The Angry Birds world on HiberWorld will launch the week of November 27th and coincide with Hiber's participation at RovioCon Google 2023 in Helsinki, Finland on the 29th.
HiberWorld was released into beta in early 2020 and has grown to hundreds of thousands of monthly users and more than 5 million worlds created. The platform enables anyone to create 3D worlds, experiences and games directly in a web browser without the need to know how to code. Earlier this year, Hiber opened up its proprietary Hiber3D tech stack to allow for coding and more complex world creation and recently added AI features to make creation faster and more fun for an ever expanding audience.
Rovio Entertainment Corporation is a global mobile-first games company that creates, develops and publishes mobile games, which have been downloaded over 5 billion times. Rovio is best known for the global Angry Birds brand, which started as a popular mobile game in 2009, and has since evolved from games to various entertainment, animations and consumer products in brand licensing. Rovio has produced The Angry Birds Movie (2016), and its sequel, The Angry Birds Movie 2 was released in 2019. The company offers multiple mobile games and has eight game studios - one in Espoo (Finland), one in Stockholm (Sweden), one in Copenhagen (Denmark), one in Barcelona (Spain), two in Montreal and one in Toronto (Canada). The studios also include a subsidiary in Izmir (Turkey) called Ruby Games, which was acquired in 2021. Most of the employees are based in Finland where Rovio is headquartered. The company's shares are listed on the main list of NASDAQ Helsinki stock exchange with the trading code ROVIO. Sega
Europe Limited has acquired more than 90 percent of Rovio's issued and outstanding shares and will delist the company from NASDAQ Helsinki stock exchange as soon as permitted under applicable laws. (www.rovio.com)
Ready Player Me is an interoperable avatar platform for apps and games. It lets you create a 3D avatar with a selfie and use it in 15,000+ compatible apps and games. You can explore virtual worlds in VRChat, join meetings in Spatial, or stream to your fans using Animaze - all with your personal avatar that represents you in virtual worlds. Any developer can integrate Ready Player Me into their apps and games using our free avatar SDKs and APIs. It's compatible with Unity and Unreal Engine and works great on the web, mobile, and desktop platforms. Learn more at https://readyplayer.me/.
Hiber, founded in 2017 and based in Gothenburg, Sweden, offers Hiber3D, a platform that enables brands, artists, musicians, influencers, and creators to build, manage and monetize their own virtual world presence on the 3D web. Hiber3D is already powering HiberWorld, a platform for people to play and create interactive 3D experiences on mobile devices and PCs. The HiberWorld platform (www.hiberworld.com) already hosts more than 5 million virtual experiences.
Hiber is backed by a range of top investors in consumer technology, gaming, and blockchain, including EQT Ventures, Luminar Ventures, Konvoy Ventures, CMT Digital, Dreamcraft Ventures, GFR Fund, SYBO, and others.
