LOS ANGELES, Sept. 30, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Future Trash, a multidisciplinary creative studio, announced today that it has secured $5M in venture capital funding led by TIRTA and General Catalyst. The funding will be dedicated to Future Trash's flagship original IP, FOAD, which leverages Fortnite's Unreal Editor (UEFN) tools and ecosystem to create a User-Generated-Content (UGC) native video game franchise.

FOAD’s are anthropomorphic explosive devices that cause all kinds of chaos and destruction across their network of games in the Fortnite metaverse.

While the AAA gaming market faces its challenges, there is a tectonic shift in the games industry with the rise of UGC gaming platforms such as Roblox and UEFN. Solo or small teams of developers have the ability to reach massive audiences quickly, and require very little capital to ship full games. With UEFN still in its early stages, FOAD has a plan to incubate brand awareness for their original IP through a network of games. Having already crossed a major milestone of 20M unique players and 1B minutes of playtime, the FOAD universe has begun to take shape.

"We believe Fortnite is the future of original IP development," says Kevin Marciano, Co-founder and CEO. “The numbers we are able to achieve on the platform are truly staggering. Epic has democratized game development and distribution in a way that is extremely liberating for a small developer studio like ours. We can build, test, learn, and iterate faster than ever before, and this new funding will accelerate everything even further. Fortnite is already a melting pot of the world’s most iconic IP, seamlessly overlapping with ours. We are relentlessly committed to our unique world and characters that serve as the connective tissue between all our games. There is a strong brand identity with every experience we craft. FOAD is more than just any single game. FOAD is a community and a lifestyle brand, both inside Fortnite and beyond.“

Ben Feder, Managing Partner at TIRTA said: “Future Trash is a passionate creative development team that has significantly impacted the UEFN ecosystem. Using UEFN's sophisticated development tools to create and distribute content in weeks or months rather than years, Future Trash iterates rapidly on creative ideas to build new entertainment franchises for gamers around the world.”

Jonny Zhang, Investor at General Catalyst commented: “We were inspired by what we believe is Kevin and the team's unique vision within the UEFN ecosystem. The way they're building community and raising awareness not only within the Fortnite ecosystem, but around their own characters and IP has been great to see. We view this as an opportunity to really stand out in the early days of the platform.”

Co-founded by Kevin Marciano, Nate Reese, Scott Ulliman, and Sebastian Alberini in late 2022, the team’s background spans many verticals of gaming and interactive media. Future Trash was quickly recognized as one of the most innovative teams building on the platform with genre defining experiences. One of which earned them a nomination at Geoff Keighley’s The Game Awards. Epic has profiled FOAD on the official Unreal Engine Youtube Page and other socials to showcase the power of UEFN.

With the recent funding, FOAD plans to accelerate their production pipeline to release over 15 games over the next 12 months spanning multiple genres and popular game types in Fortnite. Go dive into the world of FOAD, powered by UEFN.

About Future Trash

Founded in 2022, Future Trash is a multidisciplinary game development studio creating original IP on UGC platforms. Future Trash’s debut and flagship IP is FOAD, a variety of competitive party games in Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN) anchored around anthropomorphic explosive characters. Headquartered in Los Angeles, California, Future Trash launched their first FOAD game in June 2023. FOAD games have been recognized by Epic, the creator community, The Game Awards, and players globally as the most innovative experiences on the platform. Crossing 20M unique players and over 1B minutes of playtime, FOAD is among the first original IP to sprout from Fortnite Creative 2.0. Visit https://www.foad.gg/ for more information, follow Future Trash on X @FoadZone, or join the community on Discord.gg/foad.

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