Survios was founded in 2013 by Nathan Burba, James Iliff, Alexander Silkin and Graham Matuszewski after they worked together at the University of Southern California on Project Holodeck, a student research project exploring motion-input based VR gaming. By 2014, the company had raised $250,000 in funding, and created several small VR demos playable on a prototype platform made of existing technologies including Oculus Rift, Razer Hydra controllers and a PlayStation Move. In May 2014, Survios raised $4 million in series A funding led by Shasta Ventures, as part of the deal Rob Coneybeer joined the company as an early investor and board member. The company completed its Series Cfunding round in December 2016 led by MGM, bringing its funding to over $50 million. As part of the deal, MGM chairman and CEO Gary Barber joined the company's board.
Games
In July 2016, the company released its first co-op VR game Raw Data, a science fiction-themed first-person shooter, for the HTC Vive via Early Access on Steam. The game reached number one overall on Steam's global top sellers list. In September 2016, it was reported that Raw Data was the first consumer VR game to reach $1 million in sales in a month and that 20% of all Vive owners had purchased the game. In early 2017, Survios announced that Raw Data would debut in VR arcades. In February 2017, Survios announced that Raw Data would be released for the Oculus Rift platform and that players would be able to join cross-platform multiplayer matches. It was also announced that the game would receive a large content update. On March 16, 2017, Raw Data was officially released on Oculus Home as part of the game's v0.6 update. Exactly a year after its Early Access debut, Raw Data added a player-versus-player mode called "Hostile Takeover" alongside its mission-based narrative campaign. Raw Data officially left Early Access on October 5, 2017, with the final game launching on Steam and Oculus Home for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift; the PlayStation VR version followed on October 10, 2017. The same day, Raw Data won the VR Game of the Year award at the first annual VR Awards, presented by AMD. At the 2017 Game Developers Conference, Survios debuted its second title, Sprint Vector. An adrenaline platformer that merges extreme athleticism within the setting of an unhinged game show, Sprint Vector features a new movement system called Fluid Locomotion that allows gamers to move at high speeds in VR without causing nausea. In October 2017, Sony Interactive Entertainment's Paris Games Week pre-show featured an official teaser trailer for Sprint Vector and the announcement that it would be released on PlayStation VR. Survios announced in E3 2018 that their next game would be Creed: Rise to Glory, based on the film Creed.
