Ex-Destiny, Halo devs bag $3.5 million seed round for VR startup Polyarc

A new Seattle VR startup from three people who helped make the hit online shooter Destiny has received a $3.5 million seed round of investment from several overseas backers.

Polyarc will focus primarily on virtual reality gaming content, but it hasn’t announced what its first game is yet. What we do know is that in March the fledgling studio received an Epic Games Unreal Developer grant. The funds were awarded for a game known only as “Moss.” Chinese investment firm UCCVR lead the round, with follow-on investments from Colopl‘s VR Fund and Vulcan Capital.

Polyarc’s three co-founders are Tam Armstrong, Danny Bulla and Chris Alderson. Armstrong worked at Bungie for six years. In this time he ended up running an animation and engineering team for Destiny. Before Destiny, Armstrong also worked on Halo: Reach. Bulla spent nearly four years at Bungie as a senior gameplay designer. Before Bungie, his resume also includes stints at Rockstar Games and Midway. Bulla and Armstrong began Polyarc in 2015.

The third cofounder, Alderson, came in after ending his own seven-year term at Bungie working as a character art lead for both Destiny and Halo-related projects. In a statement concerning the new company on his LinkedIn page, Alderson wrote that at Polyarc, “Our immediate goal is to make full use of the immersion and physical interaction made possible only with VR to create thoughtfully designed, appealing, and accessible games with high player value.”

With the addition of Polyarc, Seattle is further cementing its place as a growing hub of VR innovation. Polyarc currently has six employees in total.

This post first appeared on UploadVR.