12 year old gets $6.5M for gaming company

When I saw this on Slashdot this morning I had to check the calendar to see if it was April first and the link to make sure it wasn’t a story from the Onion.

“A Silicon Valley company co-founded by a 12-year-old has just raised $6.5 million in venture capital. PlaySpan, based in Santa Clara, Calif. says it offers game publishers a technology that lets users make payments and shop for other items. It calls itself the first “publisher-sponsored in-game commerce network.” Arjun Mehta, a 6th grader, says on his Web site that he is passionate about software that can make the game experience more “rewarding,” and that he started the company last year in his garage. He paid for it from earnings made from selling online game items he won.” (link)

PlaySpan’s web site says that it is “based in Silicon Valley with offices in Mumbai and Shanghai.” While I don’t doubt Arjun’s role as some sort of “founder”, he’s surely a figurehead at this point. I mean, what would happen to the company if your chief executive had to take a week off to finish his big science fair project? Well, maybe he has people who do that kind of stuff for him these days. Having him as your designated “founder” certainly is good for publicity, in any case.

Update (9/20): Akshay points us to an item on VentureBeat on this. Check on the first comment: “The story about 12 year old co-founder is a big oversell…I know because I broke the story on funding two days ago. The CEO Karl Mehta and Arjun’s dad is the real guy behind it…arjun just came up with part of the idea for it, and is not really involved with the business per se. Arjun’s mention on the site is a gimmick which will be rectified soon…the release doesn’t mention him and for good reason.“

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Brazilian gang kidnaps gamer to get password

A gang in Brazil kidnapped one of the top players of GunBound,a MMOG out of South Korea. Gizmodo reports:

“An armed gang of four kidnapped one of the world’s top RPG gamers after one criminal’s girlfriend lured him into a fake date using Orkut, Google’s social network. After sequestering him in Sao Paulo, they held a gun against the victim’s head for five hours to get his password, which they wanted to sell for $8,000. And yes, the story gets even better. …”

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