Gfycat has made a platform for creating short-form looping content, and today the company is making it easier to create imagery from games.
The Gfycat for Gaming platform makes it easy to create, browse, and share game content, for both game studios and players alike. Palo Alto, California-based Gfycat provides a high-quality streaming and editing app so you can create, cut, and share footage from gameplay.
Gaming is already one of the most popular verticals on Gfycat, with active gamers across 150 countries creating GIFs on the site every day. For example, when DOTA2 commentator ReDeYe made famous the line “Brutal. Savage. Rekt,” that moment quickly became a Gfycat, with the URL gfycat.com/NippyKindLangur. Soon the phrase “NippyKindLangur” became popular on DOTA2 message boards; it became a reaction to an awesome play.
The top 25 games on Gfycat are all top-selling favorites that people love to play and talk about, and gamers have even started using “Gfycat” as a verb to mean “create the GIF moment and share.”
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, The Legend of Zelda, and Fortnite regularly dominate the site’s trending section.
Gfycat for Gaming was created in demand to consolidate the millions of gaming GIFs in one place. Gfycat for Gaming populates gaming content across the site and can be accessed in a “Gaming” tab on the homepage, making it easier for gamers to create and showcase in-game moments.
“Gfycat for Gaming makes it easy for anyone to browse and enjoy game replays. From Overwatch to Rocket League, you can get lost for hours and hours with entertaining content of the best moments,” said Ernestine Fu, board director at Gfycat and partner at Alsop Louie Partners, in an email.
The prolific nature of its gaming creators — coupled with Project Maru, a facial recognition technology that can identify video game characters — allows Gfycat to measure the popularity of a game on its platform as a proxy for market success. For example, Project Maru recognized when the new Overwatch character Doomfist was released, because GIF creation on the platform spiked 116 percent. These insights into gamer’s behaviors have made Gfycat a valuable partner to gaming studios looking to demo and market their games.
“We’re committed to supporting our creators’ and users’ interests, starting with gaming. Gaming is the first vertical we’re highlighting as Gfycat.com becomes the entertainment destination site for short-form looping content,” said Richard Rabbat, CEO of Gfycat, in a statement.
As the popularity of eSports and live streaming have skyrocketed, more and more gamers are using GIFs to communicate. Gfycat’s userbase and web traffic has grown rapidly. The platform now has 180 million active users and over 500 million page views every month.
Gfycat raised $10 million and it has 18 employees.
