Keywords Studios acquires Snowed In Studios for $4M (CAD)

July 20, 2018 — Fusion DigiNet

keywordsKeywords Studios, the international creative and technical services provider to the global video games industry, has acquired Snowed In Studios Inc. from its current owners, Jean-Sylvain Sormany, Tim Vito and Evan Hahn, for up to $4 million Canadian dollars.

Founded in 2010 and based in Ottawa, Canada, Snowed In offers engineering and co-development services to the video-games industry and has a strong global reputation and well-established relationships with clients such as Ubisoft, Nickelodeon and Bethesda. The company has 29 employees all working in-house in its office in Ottawa led by the current owners, who will remain with Snowed In to drive its growth as part of Keywords.

Andrew Day, CEO of Keywords Studios, said, “The addition of Snowed In to the Group will add strength and scale to our recently established engineering service line and enable Snowed In to take advantage of the group’s very strong presence in the region to support its growth. Having grown the engineering service line from nothing in May 2017, we now employ over 300 software engineers in multiple regions, and I’m delighted that Jean-Sylvain, Tim, Evan and their highly talented and creative team are joining the group as we continue to grow.”

Ireland, Dublin & Canada, Ottawa

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Keywords acquires Blindlight for up to $10M

June 11, 2018 — Fusion DigiNet

keywordsKeywords Studios, the international technical services provider to the global video games industry, has acquired Blindlight LLC for a consideration of up to $10m, from the founder, Lev Chapelsky.

Blindlight achieved EBITDA of an average of $1m per annum over the three-year period to 31 December 2017. Under the terms of the acquisition Keywords is paying an initial $3.64m in cash and will issue 64,521 new ordinary shares in Keywords to the seller on the first anniversary of the acquisition which will then be subject to orderly market provisions for a further 12 months. Deferred consideration of up to $4.8m will be payable to the seller in cash depending on the performance of the business in the 12-month periods to the first and second anniversaries of the acquisition.

Founded in 2001 and based in Hollywood, California, Blindlight enjoys a leading position in the provision of Hollywood production services for the video games industry. The company works on behalf of game publishers and developers in procuring specialised talent and managing the entire production processes for the parts of games that benefit from Hollywood production resources. Blindlight’s service disciplines include voiceover production, celebrity acquisition and rights management, game writing, music, sound design and motion capture.

Andrew Day, CEO of Keywords Studios, said, “Keywords and Blindlight have got to know each other well over the past three years and we see good opportunities to leverage both businesses to offer a wider range of world leading services to our clients. We are delighted to welcome Lev and the rest of the team to the Keywords family. Following our recent acquisition of music services companies, Cord Worldwide and Laced, we see excellent opportunities for Blindlight to bring these services to Los Angeles, as well as providing access to further opportunities for our downstream production services of translation and localised voice over.”

Ireland, Dublin & USA, West Hollywood, CA

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Pokémon GO creator Niantic acquires AR startup Escher Reality

February 1, 2018 — Fusion DigiNet

NianticThe company behind Pokémon GO, Niantic, has acquired augmented reality startup Escher Reality. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Escher Reality builds backend services for cross-platform mobile AR so users can interact with each other and objects in the environment. The startup offered functionality for shared experiences that was absent in both Google’s ARCore and Apple’s ARKit. The startup’s investors include Uncork Capital, Founders Fund, Y Combinator, Liquid 2 Ventures, Webb Investment Network, iRobot Ventures, Presence Capital, Into Ventures and others.

Niantic CEO John Hanke said, “The addition of the Escher AR technology is incredibly exciting to us at Niantic as it significantly accelerates our work on persistent, shared AR as part of the Niantic real-world application platform. It’s our intention to make our cross-platform AR technology available more widely to developers later this year.”

Niantic is releasing its next big AR title Harry Potter Wizards Unite this year.

USA, San Francisco & Sunnyvale, CA

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Keywords Studios acquires games developer Sperasoft

December 13, 2017 — Fusion DigiNet

keywords

Keywords Studios, an international technical services provider to the global video games industry, has acquired Russian game development business Sperasoft from the founders Igor Efremov, Alexei Kudriashov and Mark Rizzo.
The total consideration is $27 million. Keywords Studios are paying $22 million in cash, $1 million of which is deferred until the first anniversary of the acquisition. The remainder will be paid through the issue of new shares, which will be issued to the sellers on the first anniversary of the acquisition.

 

Headquartered in Santa Clara, California, Sperasoft provides game development, art creation and software engineering services to video game developers and publishers around the world from its production studios in St Petersburg and Volgograd, Russia and Krakow, Poland. Founded in 2004, Sperasoft employs 400 software engineers and artists. The company offers a full range of services for initial game development as well as developing games in live operations.

Andrew Day, Chief Executive Officer of Keywords Studios, said, “The acquisition of Sperasoft provides us with an entry point into co-development, positioning us as a strategic partner to games developers at the early stages of the games development lifecycle. As games are becoming bigger and are higher definition, game developers are increasingly relying upon co-development arrangements with companies like Sperasoft to provide them with broader capability to develop both initial games and additional content and features post launch.”

USA, Santa Clara, CA & Ireland, Dublin

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SGN acquires mobile games developer Mob Science

June 14, 2013 — Fusion DigiNet

logo-sgn-silverSGN (Social Gaming Network), a cross-platform mobile games developer, has acquired Mob Science. The deal will include Mob Science’s full game portfolio, including its most popular title Legends: Rise of a Hero, adding more than 50M users to the SGN network.

“Mob Science is a proven game development company with collectively over 75 years of experience in top-tier mobsciencesocial game creation,” said Chris DeWolfe, CEO and Founder of SGN. “Both SGN and Mob Science stand for quality, enabling us to continue our strategic growth and market expansion.”

Mob Science’s team will stay in their Carlsbad, CA offices as the newest extension of SGN. More recruitment and strategic acquisitions will be slated for announcement later this year.

USA, Los Angeles, CA & Carlsbad, CA

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