The social gaming platform Rec Room has recently received new investment as it works to expand its previously VR-focused environment to all leading gaming systems.

The company has successfully completed a $20 million Series C funding round, spearheaded by Madrona Venture Group. Current investors, including First Round Capital, Index, Sequoia and DAG, were also involved in this financing. To date, the total funding secured is nearly $50 million.

For several years, the platform has functioned as a social center and gaming destination for virtual reality enthusiasts. More recently, the company has been working to broaden its scope beyond being labeled the “Roblox of VR” and to enhance its features to better serve its younger audience. This year marked significant progress in achieving these goals.

CEO Nick Fajt reports that the company’s overall audience has grown threefold since the same period last year, due to a focused effort on expanding to new platforms. Although a significant portion of Rec Room’s users still originate from its core VR community, the number of console players has increased considerably in 2020, and Fajt anticipates that mobile devices will become the most common way people access Rec Room by the end of the following year. Currently, mobile Android remains one of the few major gaming platforms where Rec Room is not yet available.

A key objective for the company in the coming year is to improve its creation tools, which empower players to design their own experiences within the game. Over 1 million of the platform’s 10 million registered users have utilized these creator tools, resulting in the creation of 4 million unique rooms. Fajt intends to increase payments to creators, projecting that they will have distributed $1 million to their creator network by the end of 2021.

Fajt explains that he aims for Rec Room’s creation tools to be more user-friendly than those on other platforms, including Roblox, prioritizing simplicity for new users and encouraging widespread participation in content creation.

“Roblox has a very successful business model, and that is well known,” Fajt stated to TechCrunch. “We are prioritizing a wide range of creative options over highly complex tools; we want anyone joining Rec Room to be able to create.”

Despite the gradual development of the VR market, Fajt confirms that the company has no plans to abandon its VR origins. The company recently updated its popular battle royale game, Rec Royale, for the new Quest 2, as well as for iOS devices.