PlaySafe ID — a platform for gamers that keeps cheaters, hackers, bots, and predators out of games — has raised $1.12M (€1 million) in pre-seed funding.
The aims is to bring trust, fairness, and accountability to gaming communities, without compromising player privacy or freedom.
The round was led by Early Game Ventures, with participation from Hartmann Capital and Overwolf. The raised capital will fuel rapid expansion and strategic platform integrations, as the company gears up for a major go-to-market push and targets 250,000+ users in the coming months.
“This round gives us the firepower to move fast, expand our world-class team, and partner with games that want the most fair and safe environment for players to enjoy,” said Andrew Wailes, CEO of PlaySafe ID, in a statement. “This is now more important than ever before. With cheating in games as a mass-epidemic that ruins fun for players daily, and the Online Safety Act ushering in long overdue requirements for child protection in gaming, PlaySafe ID’s mission to safeguard gamers isn’t just relevant – it’s now essential for compliance and the future of global gaming.”
Built with a privacy-first mindset, PlaySafe ID issues a verified, anonymous, and game-agnostic digital ID that proves a user is real and hasn’t been caught cheating or being inappropriate to children in games. These are core problems that continue to erode online experiences across games.
By offering a single, secure identity layer, the platform empowers both developers and communities to enforce fair play across titles, without sacrificing player anonymity, or the open and creative nature of games.
Early Game Ventures, which led the round, is known for backing early-stage frontier tech. “We believe PlaySafeID is building the trust layer for gaming—and beyond. In a world where AI and anonymity are eroding safety and fairness, PlaySafeID restores balance with identity, transparency, and accountability,” said Cristian Munteanu, managing partner at Early Game Ventures, in a statement. “PlaySafeID builds a network-effects flywheel. Once a gamer is verified through PlaySafeID, that identity becomes portable across games, platforms, and genres. The more developers adopt it, the more valuable it becomes to players—and vice versa. Eventually, the verified identity becomes a default layer of the gaming stack, just like your Steam account or your Xbox Live profile. It’s a winner-takes-all kind of play.”
Hartmann Capital, an investment firm focused on emerging digital ecosystems, also participated in Playsafe ID’s pre-seed round.
“Gaming has quickly become the new social center of our world, with over 3 billion active gamers globally. Despite its immense social and economic value, the gaming ecosystem remains largely ungoverned. Accountability is fragmented across platforms, allowing bad actors to evade consequences by simply creating new accounts or migrating between games,” said Felix Hartmann, managing partner at Hartmann Capital in a statement. “Playsafe introduces a judicial system for the digital world—ensuring accountability, safety, and fairness in online spaces that have grown increasingly toxic and uninhabitable. As a universal authority beyond any single game or even nation, Playsafe establishes a digital rule of law across multiplayer platforms worldwide.”
PlaySafe ID is currently in integration talks with several major gaming platforms, with first partnerships set to launch later this year.
Origins
In a message to GamesBeat, Wailes said his inspiration for the company cae from his lifelong love for gaming.
“I truly love the competition and challenge, the social side, the amazing worlds and games that we all get to play in. Gaming is special to me, and always has been. Unfortunately, gaming has changed,” Wailes said. “This journey started with me and my friends all getting frustrated at the amount of cheaters we were encountering across literally everything we played. It just seemed that there were more than ever, and everyone that I know was having the same experience.”
He felt like his hobby was being eroded.
“One day, one of my best friends made a joke: ‘Hey Andrew, you work in tech and gaming. Just fix this for us’. I laughed and replied – ‘Yeah sure, I’ll just fix cheating in all games lol. Hold my beer’,” Wailes said. “Although it was a jokey exchange, it stayed with me. I didn’t like what was happening to something I loved. I knew gaming could be better, because it used to be. I really did want to solve this problem.”
He thought about it and felt like all roads pointed to the same problem.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re caught cheating, because you just create a new account and come straight back in,” he said.
He said this is also what gives cheat developers an unfair advantage over game devs and anti-cheat solutions. If they get caught, they essentially have an unlimited number of lives to keep coming back in, to figure out how to update the cheats, and to become undetectable again. The endless cycle of cat and mouse continues, with players suffering.
“Additionally, after becoming a dad for the first time I started to hear the horror stories regarding the volume of child grooming and abuse in games. Then I had a penny drop moment that both cheating and grooming have the same root cause; it doesn’t matter if you’re caught. Just create a new account and get straight back in,” Wailes said. “Meaningful accountability is the missing element.”
And so his inspiration was the thought that gaming could be better, more fair, and more fun for everyone.
“The thought that children should be able to explore these amazing worlds without the risks they face today. I want gaming to be better, so I’ll do my best to be the bastion for players, children, parents, and games. PlaySafe ID is my solution to make this a reality,” he said.
The team has seven people from place such as Google and Jagex. Now it plans to expand.
Wailes got started in his free time in early 2023 in Cammbridge, United Kingdom.
“I spent about six months just exploring the problem, how a solution could work for gamers, and chatting about it with mates,” he said. “I then put together a prototype/proof of concept and got a few rented game servers to run some tests. From this success and the reception we had from gamers, I decided that this really had a shot at being a real solution that could truly make gaming better. July 2024 is when I decided to focus on PlaySafe ID full time and to build a rockstar team to turn this into a real venture.”
How it works
Wailes said that on the surface, it’s quite simple. Gamers can claim a PlaySafe ID, and they can only ever have one.
“They create an account with us then do a quick verification. This is powered by Onfido who are our phenomenal partner, and giants in the (know your customer) KYC and identity verification industry. They’re also based out of the UK so they’re governed by UK and EU data privacy law and compliance standards,” he said.
He added, “We use a zero-knowledge verification with Onfido. They manage the verification for us, and only notify us if the check was successful and it’s the first time they’ve seen this person. This process means that PlaySafe ID doesn’t have to see or store any data, documents or biometrics from the verification, whilst ensuring that every user is legitimate.”
Users connect their PlaySafe ID to games and services. The game calls our API to ask if they’re able to play. If yes, they can play. If no, they can’t. It’s as simple as that.
“In regards to issuing penalties and bans; game developers notify us of any violations: cheating, botting, or child grooming/sexualization of children (CSAM/CSEA). We have some tech on our backend that looks at the trust score of the developer sending the violation, the context of the game, the context of the violation, and then we’re able to make decisions about issuing a penalty to the PlaySafe ID,” he said. “This process and tech means we can minimize false positives whilst enforcing meaningful penalties across games and services. Lastly, we have some cool security features.”
He added,”Obviously a PlaySafe ID is a valuable thing, and we want to ensure that users can’t have their accounts stolen and that people can’t trade PlaySafe IDs. If we see suspicious activity, we can temporarily suspend access until the user takes another selfie that matches the original they used to verify themselves. This is the same type of workflow that banks use before allowing you to send money. Again, this is handled entirely by Onfido.”
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