Vivox

Vivox was founded by Jeff Pulver in 2005. On September 19, 2005 Vivox announced that they had received $6 million in venture capital funding from Canaan Partners and GrandBanks Capital.

On November 13, 2007 Vivox announced that they had secured $7.8 million in series B financing. The B round financing was led by Benchmark Capital and supported by existing investors Canaan Partners and GrandBanks Capital. With the support of Benchmark Capital, former CEO of JAMDAT Mobile, Mitch Lasky was added to the Vivox board of directors.

On February 2, 2010 Vivox announced that they had raised $6.8 Million in funding for their C round. The round was led by IDG Ventures and included follow on investment from existing investors, Benchmark Capital, Canaan Partners and GrandBanks Capital. In addition IDG Ventures, Managing Director, Phil Sanderson joined the Vivox Board.

On May 10, 2006 CCP Games and Vivox announced that EVE Online players would have real-time, in-game voice communication as the result of an agreement between the two companies. Vivox provided CCP with an integrated solution that allows players to speak with each other in-game, create audio conference channels for their gang, corporation or alliance.[1]

On February 27, 2007, Vivox announced a partnership with Linden Lab and that they would provide integrated voice communications to the Second Life Grid. This included spatial audio that allows residents to hear each other based on their positions. This technology was licensed from DiamondWare Technologies.[2]

During the 2008 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, California, Vivox announced a partnership with Sony Online Entertainment.[3] The agreement between the two companies brought integrated voice chat into all existing and planned SOE products including SOE's out of game communication application, Station Launcher.[3] At this point the SOE games that include Vivox Voice are: EverQuest, APB, EverQuest 2, Star Wars Galaxies, and Planetside 2.

On May 13, 2008 Vivox and NCsoft announced a partnership that would bring voice to the NCsoft player community.[4]

September 16, 2008 it was announced that Vivox would provide voice technology for 38 Studios upcoming MMO.[5]

March 24, 2009 Vivox and Real Time Worlds declared that Vivox would provide voice for Real Time Worlds' MMO, APB. To be included in this integration is use of Vivox's spatial 3D voice capabilities.[6]

Vivox provided its software for Epic Games' Fortnite Battle Royale on the Nintendo Switch (Vivox was already used by the game across other platforms), which otherwise lacked a voice chat function without using the Nintendo Switch Online companion phone app. Vivox' software provided a direct voice chat solution (not requiring the mobile app) that also support cross-platform communications. Vivox announced in February 2019 it will provide its software development kit for Switch voice chat so that other games can take advantage of this approach.[7]

Vivox has encountered reprisals from the Linux community for encouraging game developers to drop Linux support, rather than making their software compatible with Linux. A developer for Alderon Games, working on the MMO dinosaur game Path of Titans, received this reply when they asked about paying them to add Linux support:

Have you considered eliminating Linux from your platforms? It might not be worth the cost to roll your own solution as evidenced by the amount of publishers and developers that use us. We don't have anything that is going to work in your use case, and wish you the best of luck with TS, but if you decide it's not worth the trouble to support what will likely be the smallest user base for your project, we're here to help. I'm going to close out this ticket but if you need anything,else, please let me know.[8]

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• Official website