Avakin Life: Another Mobile Metaverse That Gained Millions of Users When You Weren't Looking

I remember chatting with a metaverse developer early last year on a potential project in Avakin Life, a mobile-based virtual world in the IMVU category, and it seemed like another niche also-ran. Avakin Life has a limited social media footprint, to judge by the relative dearth of user-made YouTube videos. (This build tutorial/speedrun above is one of the few out there that quickly pops up.) But as with Rec Room, this seems mainly to do with Avakin Life being targeted at young teens who aren't yet on social media in a major way.

But good lord it's large:

Avakin Life has more than 200 million registered users [note, see below - ed.] on iOS and Android and more than a million who come back at least once a day. Previous investors Novator Partners, David Helgason, and Hilmar Pétursson also participated in the funding round. All told, it took about a year to close the deal, said Lockwood Publishing CEO Halli Bjornsson in an interview with GamesBeat.

Registered users aren't the same as monthly active users, but with 1 million daily actives, I'd estimate the MAU as being about 10 million give or take. (I.E. a bit larger than IMVU's 7 million monthly users.)

Reminds me that longtime reader "Pulsar" mentioned it as a way of thinking about virtual worlds apart from the Second Life model -- and a mobile alternative to it:

"Some people I know could no longer use Second Life well with their old computer (that was still working OK for anything else they were doing) and they were looking for a mobile alternative, so they went there. Avakin Life is more gaming-oriented than SL, but you can still chat, socialize, etc. These are further users that Linden Lab is losing on the road."

Comments

[Never Again]

Avakin Life is a scam don’t play this game. The company is corrupt.