Liv has recently raised $8.5 million in a funding round for its platform for creators. It offers services that help augmented and virtual reality content creators to perform hassle-free recording and livestreaming within applications and games. The funding round was led by Bitkraft Ventures, with contributions from Credo Ventures, Sony Innovation Fund, Olive Tree Capital, Amazon Alexa Fund, and Samsung Next. It also saw the participation of Angel investors such as Maveron partner Dave Wu. Liv is set to utilise the funding to make investments into a creator and developer fund for expanding its team. Currently, the company is hiring across employees across various domains such as operations, community management, engineering, marketing and design.
Liv is on its way to transform the virtual reality streaming domain and enhance the way in which content is consumed. This can be facilitated by letting creators share their experiences across augmented reality and virtual reality games with followers without delay. They can either present their real selves in real-time through mixed reality capture (MRC) technology or step into their avatars.
The Liv SDK is utilised by VR application developers for getting access to a range of capture technologies and tools for users, contributing to the creation of video content for applications. Liv creators have achieved more than 3.5 billion views to their content pool since 2018. This was right after the company’s launch, back in 2017.
AJ “Dr. Doom” Shewki, Liv co-founder and CEO, has shared some insight regarding the company’s beginnings in an interview.
According to Dr. Doom, the beginning was quite humble as everything started from a Twitch show, which later turned into the vision for the company. He elaborated that his team initially procured some VR headsets, and highlighted his background as a competitive gamer. The Twitch show they hosted focused on the future of VR eSports with the participation of competitors. The initial attempt included Dr. Doom’s team using a setup to stream themselves. During this venture, they learnt that the experience of recording, streaming, and casting in virtual reality needed a lot of fine-tuning.
He emphasised that the problem mainly stemmed from the watcher observing from the direct point of view of the streamer. This led to them experiencing signs of sickness. However, with the new technology, viewers can step into the virtual space and getting a different perspective that is more engaging. The company has released a VR demo on its Discord server. It showed Dr. Doom engaging with several objects in the virtual space. Upon touching one of the objects a video recording showing one of the VR adventure sessions.
According to Dr. Doom, Liv provides support for upwards of 50 games, and its platform has more than 2,200 developers, along with thousands of monthly creators. Overall, there is 30 thousand hours of content generated every month.
The new technology does not require much effort in terms of post production. Creators on the platform can film themselves in real-time or make a custom avatar to partake in the experience.
Liv is set to make more of an impact in the VR space with the release of their volumetric streaming platform.
