Headed by Oculus cofounder Nate Mitchell, Mountaintop has raised $5.5 million for a player-versus-player first-person shooter game.
The seed round comes from an unidentified group of investors, friends, and family. Mitchell’s cofounders include Matt Hansen, former chief operating officer at Double Fine; Rich Lyons, formerly developer at Naughty Dog and Vigil; and Mark Terrano, former creative director at Oculus and cofounder at Hidden Path.
The company surfaced in June 2020, and now it has nearly 20 full-time employees. The staff includes veterans from Epic, Blizzard, Naughty Dog, Respawn, Infinity Ward, Ubisoft, Raven, Turtle Rock, Double Fine, PopCap, and Oculus. The company is hiring, and its openings are listed here.
The team is looking for people who are collaborative, anti-crunch, diverse, and inclusive. The company is in its ideation and playtesting phase, and it will probably share more details later this year. The team is distributed and working remotely.
“Since we’re not tied to one city/state, we can bring together the very best team from all over, and folks can live/work from wherever they’re happiest,” said Mitchell in an email to GamesBeat.
Above: Nate Mitchell, cofounder of Oculus, shows off the Oculus Rift S in 2019.
Image Credit: Dean Takahashi
As for the PvP shooter genre, Mitchell said, “We all absolutely love this space as players ourselves, and our first title is inspired by some of our all-time favorites in the genre.”
The company isn’t saying yet what the game will be about, and it hasn’t announced any platforms. But it is actively hiring people with PC and console experience.
“There’s never been a better time to be making games,” said Mitchell. “With incredible tools like Unreal Engine 4, a small veteran team can build even more impressive titles, focusing on amazing player experiences rather than reinventing foundational technology.”
He added, “We also believe remote-first teams are the future of game development, and we’re building a studio culture that embraces that, along with our other core values (collaboration, transparency, inclusion, anti-crunch, etc.), from the ground up.”
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