Game technology solutions provider Genvid Technologies Inc. today announced an additional $2.5 million in financing alongside the general release of its software development kit and enhanced live-streaming interactivity platform.

The company said it has already integrated with the popular first-person shooter game “Counter-Strike: Global Offensive” and works with Twitch and YouTube.

For most live-streamed content — from games to a person with a mobile phone at an event — viewer interaction is limited to text and emoticons. Special services have emerged in the industry to tighten the connection of the text chat to what appears on screen through special commands and interactive chat bots, but interaction tends to hit a wall there.

This can result in less data flowing to live-streaming platform providers and advertisers about user engagement since information about viewers is limited to chat and viewing metrics.

With Genvid’s SDK and platform, developers can map viewer interactions from a game directly onto the video itself in real-time. Game developers will be able to release in-game tools that allow viewers to choose whose point of view they see in a tournament, or swap between contestants, interact with user interface elements such as a battleground map on the fly and engage in other actions that enhance viewing.

The Genvid platform is designed to be streaming provider-agnostic and includes the ability to work with popular services such as Twitch and YouTube. The platform does this by providing a browser overlay that displays on top of the video as it plays, but also allows the user to click, mouse-over and interact with the platform in real-time. The user activity is then translated back to Genvid’s system, which interacts with streamers, advertisers and the viewers.

In a bid to increase viewer interactivity with streamers, Twitch Interactive, a subsidiary of Amazon.com Inc., also released its Twitch Extensions program at the end of August.

With this program, third-party developers can build interactive widgets and overlays that run alongside streams to allow viewers to participate in the stream by posting questions, answering polls, requesting music and even fighting monsters or other viewers in a pixelated arena.

Genvid Chief Operating Officer Christopher Cataldi said that the company fully intends to integrate with Twitch Extensions.

“We are additionally very excited for the recent launch of Twitch’s Extensions program, which we intend to support inside our SDK so developers can use Genvid to significantly lower the amount of work they have to do to get Extensions working and stream directly on Twitch.tv,” he said.

Through Genvid’s interactivity platform, the company hopes to give game developers and advertisers increased visibility into how streamers attract and interact with audiences. The platform provides a number of ways to gather data on how viewers watch, what they want to see and can even individually target particular viewers for specific advertising.

For example, a viewer who tends to follow a specific tournament contestant could be delivered advertising personalized with that contestant’s logo and merchandise. With Genvid’s technology, the advertisement could be seamlessly layered onto the broadcast for that viewer and even direct them how to get more information without interrupting the experience.

Genvid said dozens of games, e-sports tournament providers and platforms have already begun work on extensions and apps that will partner with the company’s integration pipeline.

“Since our initial launch last year, many top titles are already integrating, and some are building exclusive content on our technology,” said Jacob Navok, chief executive of Genvid. “With the online launch of our SDK, any developer can build interactive live-streams.”

The first game to integrate with Genvid will be “Counter-Strike: Global Offensive,” developed by Hidden Path Entertainment and Valve Corp. It will enable viewers to control the user interface as if they were in-game.

CSGO is a globally dominant first-person shooter that is available on Windows PCs, Macs, Xbox and PlayStation. The game’s popularity brought an average of more than 369,000 players concurrently on Valve’s Steam platform alone during the last 30 days, according to Steamcharts. CSGO players also collectively spent over 272 million hours shooting digital opponents in that same period. A recent CSGO tournament hosted by Major League Gaming in Columbus, Ohio in 2016 raised the stakes with the first $1 million prize pool.

This recent funding boost of $2.5 million to Genvid raises its total capital to $4 million. The funding round was led by Los Angeles-based March Capital Partners, with Chicago’s OCA Ventures participating.

Image: Genvid