A former Canva software engineer and Westpac product manager have teamed up to bring ‘Loftia’ to life, alongside some big-name US investors.
Its tagline is a ‘cozy online game set in a warm, solarpunk world,’ and MMO – massively multiplayer online – gamers can’t get enough.
‘Loftia‘ is the brainchild of Sydney couple Martina Qin and Michael Su. Before founding video game development company Qloud, Qin worked in Strategy at EY and as a product manager at Westpac. Su spent four years as a software developer at Canva.
Now, Australian-based Qin and Su, together with their US co-founder Eric Mallon, are celebrating a big win, closing a $7.5 million seed round led by Bay Area gaming and entertainment fund GFR and Denver-headquartered Bitkraft Ventures.
“Loftia hits at an underserved and high-potential intersection of cozy and social with platform potential, and the team has shown real traction in growing a passionate following around that vision, leveraging community-first strategies,” says Jasper Brand, a partner at Bitkraft Ventures.
Teppei Tsutsui, a general partner at GFR Fund, says Qloud’s unique positioning and early traction made the seed investment an attractive proposition.
“In a market filled with combat-heavy, high-stakes gameplay, Loftia stands out with its solarpunk vision of community, collaboration, and cozy world-building. What impressed us most wasn’t just the game, but the founders’ deep alignment with their audience—building in public, growing a passionate community, and making extraordinary achievements before even launching,” says Tsutsui.
Su and Qin say that while their investors are in the US, the company headquarters will stay in Sydney.
“We’re a remote studio and so many of our team of 28 are located internationally as well, from countries including the US, Canada, and Brazil,” Qin tells Forbes Australia.
The lofty path forward
For any media company, having a built-in audience to consume the content being developed is key. Fortunately for the Qloud founders, they have 16,000 sets of eyeballs that have already put their money where their mouths are.
The company raised USD$1.2 million (around $1.8 million AUD) for Loftia on U.S. crowdfunding site Kickstarter in August 2023. The initial goal was $150,000, but 16,740 people had other ideas, contributing more than six times that.
Seeing there was an audience for the game they envisioned, Qin and Su packed up and went to the US to learn all they could about the right way to make a video game. In 2024, they participated in a gaming startup accelerator run by Andreessen Horowitz called Speedrun, which then invested in a pre-seed round and has also participated in the seed fundraise.
Today, Loftia has more than 220,000 followers on Instagram and 240,000 on TikTok. Qin keeps their social followers updated as they build Loftia and develop characters, which they call ‘Loftians.’
“Over two-thirds of Australians regularly play games, and the global industry is estimated to grow to $240 billion globally by 2025,.”
Sydney Games and Play Lab
“Looking back, I’ve always viewed games primarily through the lens of people and community, with the underlying game mechanics serving as the foundation for connecting players,” says Su.
“At age 13, I started my tech journey through learning to code online and setting up a community server for one of the biggest MMOs at the time: MapleStory. It quickly became one of the biggest in the world, averaging thousands of concurrent online players. So I effectively started off my teenage years by running an MMO!”
The couple say they don’t know when Loftia will be available for gamers to play, but that the content will be similar to some of their old-school favourites.
“It all started because we were addicted to cozy games, but really wanted the nostalgic, wholesome community of old school MMOs like Club Penguin and Maple Story. So we decided to make our own,” says Qin.
According to Reddit, Wired, and Deakin University, ‘cozy games’ are a genre ‘designed to make you feel comfortable, warm and safe.’
“A key component of these games is relationship building, and the games are often set in a natural world with lots of greenery,” says Morgan Pinder, a gaming expert from Deakin’s Faculty of Arts and Education.
Qin says the founders are committed to creating a Loftian world that sparks curiosity and has a meaningful impact.
“One of our missions is for players to come away asking themselves, ‘What can I do to help the environment and help my community?’ By weaving eco-conscious values into our game, we hope to be a part of the growing movement towards a greener and sustainable future,” says Qin.
Solarpunk solutions for a greener world
Video games offering a hopeful vision of the future as a result of sustainability efforts and a reliance on renewables are known as solarpunk.
“Unlike dystopian futures, solarpunk imagines worlds where society overcomes environmental challenges through ingenuity, generativity, independence and community,” the Australian Centre for the Moving Image explains.
Combining solarpunk, cozy, and MMO is a formula the Qloud founders and their US backers have a lot of faith in, and believe their users will pay an upfront cost to play.
“Players will have the option to purchase additional cosmetic microtransactions such as furniture for their in-game houses, or fashionable outfits for their characters. After the game launches, there’ll also be merchandise available as the Loftia IP continues to grow,” says Qin.
It may sound pie in the sky, but the University of Sydney reiterates that there is real money in this type of gaming.
“Over two-thirds of Australians regularly play games, and the global industry is estimated to grow to $240 billion globally by 2025,” according to the Sydney Games and Play Lab.
“This growth is increasingly driven by an expansion of who plays games, the types of stories and experiences told through this young medium, and the careers available to those skilled in games.”
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