Critical Force, the Finnish developer behind hit mobile FPS Critical Ops has raised $6.3m(£4.7m) in funding from a Finish public grant organisation, Business Finland.

Critical Force will use the funding to ‘scale their game to be the world’s leading mobile esports FPS franchise.’ Critical Ops has been downloaded over 40 million times ahead of their showing in the Amazon Mobile Master, they also recently showed off their new spectator client.

Critical Force also stated that the funding will be used to contribute to the emergence and operating of the global Critical Ops esports ecosystem. They hope this will drive new value and business opportunities for the existing international esports market. A major part of the funding will go into developing and testing a scalable and automated production platform designed to speed up the game’s development, as well as an analytics tool to support data-analysis of the game. Lastly, the funding will assist in Critical Force building their new game, a project that the above systems seem ideal for.

Veli-Pekka Piirainen, Critical Force CEO had this to say: “With the new funding we are happy to have the opportunity to really show our hands regarding our status as the number one developer of mobile esports FPS games. The news of the funding coincided beautifully with us reaching 40 million downloads, as well as our very first Critical Ops, a live tournament in Seattle with $40.000 prize pool”

Critical Ops reached a major milestone by getting its 40 millionth download of the game recently, while the game is still not officially released. The 1.0 release of the game currently has no date.

Esports Insider says: This is big news for the Finnish team, for a game yet to be released it carries a lot of ‘hype’. Its showing at the Amazon Mobile Masters will be its first real test as an esports on a big stage, after their recent tournament in Seattle and we will be watching the game’s development closely.

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