// startup autopsy

Metaplace

Raph Koster's virtual world vision that arrived just as social gaming ate the market.

marketfitAcqui-hire

Fatal mistake: Metaplace built a powerful virtual world creation platform but failed to bootstrap the critical mass of active players needed to make those worlds worth visiting, leaving an ecosystem of empty games.

Founded	2006
Closed	2010
Country	USA
Sector	Gaming

50%

Key Events Timeline

2006-01-01

FOUNDING

Metaplace founded by Raph Koster with the vision of a browser-based platform for user-created virtual worlds and games.

2008-07-01

FUNDING

Raised funding to build out the virtual world creation tools and grow the developer and player community.

2009-01-01

PRODUCT LAUNCH

Launched public beta of the Metaplace platform; media praised the technology but active world populations remained thin.

2010-01-01

SHUTDOWN

Metaplace announces closure of the platform, citing inability to reach necessary scale; Playdom acqui-hires the team.

Full Analysis

Analyst plan

Documented cause

Metaplace, founded by Ultima creator Raph Koster, launched as a browser-based virtual world platform enabling user-generated games. The startup faced insurmountable competitive pressures from established player...

s in the space. Second Life had already captured significant user traction with an established community, while Zynga dominated the emerging social gaming market through its superior social graph capa

Verified lesson

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€23.5M

Peak valuation

HypeCycle · MoatType · ResearchTags

Metaplace raised €9.4M before metaplace built a powerful virtual world creation platform but failed to bootstrap the critical mass of active players needed to make those worlds worth visiting, leaving an ecosystem of empty games. ended it. See the documented cause, verified lesson and all failure signals.

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