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A Sydney IT startup has netted another $500,000 loan from Ottawa.
A local IT startup aimed at eliminating the lag time for gamers playing others online has netted another $500,000 loan from the federal government.
Ubique Networks Inc., based in Sydney, announced Tuesday through the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency it had received the funding to “expand the commercialization” of the company’s Swarmio eSports platform that cuts through the milliseconds of a delay involved in playing a game through multiple internet servers.
In a news release, Ubique Networks said the technology “levels the playing field for gamers located anywhere in the world, by ensuring fair play at the highest level of competition, where mere milliseconds determine eSport tournament winners.”
In multiplayer online gaming, one of the key challenges affecting the player experience is the lag caused by latency and packet loss — in other words the gaming experience doesn’t happen in real-time.
Latency and packet loss result from the distance between the players and the game servers, and network congestion, respectively.
Tools such as Swarmio improves the content and overall gaming experience.
Vijai Karthigesu, CEO of Ubique Networks, founded the company in 2014. It currently employs 14 people but the federal funding just announced is expected to create 10 new positions to “execute its marketing strategy.”
A company spokesperson wasn’t available for further comment Tuesday, however Karthigesu, who remains based in Toronto, said in the release the company has been experiencing “high growth” for the past three years.
“Our growth will continue to be intense as we launch our technology in more countries for more users,” he added.
Ubique Networks has received several government loans totally $2.5 million over the past two years.
In April 2016, the company received $500,000 through ACOA’s business development program and as much as $498,000 from the National Research Council (NRC) of Canada’s industrial research assistance program to support development of the “lag-less” gaming technology.
Innovacorp, the province’s early stage venture capital firm, contributed $500,000 toward the $2-million project, according to project details available on ACOA’s website.
In March 2017, ACOA loaned Ubique Networks another $468,750 and up to $499,657 from the NRC. The overall cost to continue its work was pegged at $1.35 million.
The federal government also gave the company a $50,000 grant to hire a chief revenue officer last year. The details of that contribution were released publicly on May 30, 2017.