Your Gaming and Esports Update
Deals
Kahoot! Acquired Drops
Online learning quiz maestro Kahoot! has acquired Drops, a company that produces language learning apps. Drops uses game-like activities to help people pick up a new language in daily five-minute sessions. The sale price was $31 million in cash with a $19 million bonus for meeting performance targets through 2022. Kahoot said that the acquisition was part of a strategy to expand into new areas of learning for school, work and home. Drops currently covers 42 languages and said it has 25 million users. Revenue in 2019 was a reported €6.3 million.
MTG Acquires Hutch
Modern Times Group has announced the acquisition of London-based mobile studio Hutch for an expected $375 million. This is the first acquisition made by newly-formed MTG holding company, GamingCo. GamingCo is a holding company formed by MTG with InnoGames announced yesterday to manage the entirety of MTG’s gaming business, including Kongregate. With this acquisition, MTG will now own Hutch’s IPs including F1 Manager, Top Drives, and Rebel Racing, and will assume its staff of over 100 team members.
Wizard Games Raises Funding
Multiplayer video game developer Wizard Games has received a “substantial” investment from Tencent Holdings. Though the exact funding, and traded equity, were undisclosed, executives at the Hangzhou-based studio have confirmed that it received a nine-figure sum in yuan. Wizard Games is set to use the investment for recruitment; international expansion; and the creation of new multiplatform IP. The funded studio is best known for its work in the shooter genre with Battle Teams, which has purportedly garnered 500 million users, and upcoming sequel Battle Teams 2, though is also exploring other areas, most notably through its sandbox construction title Sea of Craft due to be released in 2021.
Quell Raises $3M For Gamified Home Fitness
Gamified home fitness company Quell has secured USD$3m (£2.2m) in a seed finance round jointly led by Khosla Ventures and Heartcore Capital with supporting investors including Tencent; Social Impact Capital; JamJar Investments; Kevin Lin and Emmett Shear; Naval Ravikant (AngelList); and Josh Hannah (WikiHow). The round values the London-based firm at approximately $15m and closely follows a crowdfunding campaign for its eponymous device, which raised a total of £501,341. The Quell system couples environment-based video games with a Bluetooth-paired haptic resistance device, with the first consumer systems expected to ship in Q4 2021.
Bombay Play Raises $1M
Mobile social game developer Bombay Play has announced that it has secured $1M in a seed round financed wholly by video game-dedicated venture capital fund Lumikai. The Mumbai-based startup is set to use the funding for future title development and to support its existing portfolio, most notably its multiplayer card game Card Party!. Bombay Play was founded in 2017 by Oliver Jones (formerly Glu Mobile and Zynga) and Abhas Saroha (formerly Zynga and Moonfrog), and has raised an estimated $2.5M to-date, with previous backers including Playco and Leo Capital.
MGVC Acquires Minority Stake in AppyFurious, Purple Games, and AppLife
MY.GAMES Venture Capital (MGVC) has announced that it is investing in three mobile studios — Belarus-based Appyfurious and Purple Games, as well as publisher and developer AppLife. MGVC has bought a minority stake in these studios, bringing the number of MGVC’s partner studios to 34. MGVC is Russian video game company My.Games’ investment division, which was founded in 2017 with the goal “to search for international promising developments in the gaming industry and promote the expansion of products to the global market.”
Bigger Games Raises $6M
Bigger Games has raised $6 million to make mobile games as Turkey’s startup market continues to grow. This is predictable, as Zynga has acquired three Turkish game studios in the past two years for more than $2.2 billion. That makes it seem like Bigger Games is part of a game investment and acquisition frenzy. GameInvest said that more than 100 game studios have raised money in the first nine months of 2020, with acquisition deals bringing the total deal amount to more than $20 billion in the nine-month period.
Updates
Niantic Donated $870k in 2020
Pokémon Go maker Niantic said its social impact for 2020 includes $170,000 in donations for pandemic relief and $700,000 for education, sustainability, and health causes. The global pandemic forced Niantic to pause community events and in-person gatherings. But it managed to find ways to support community engagement via online events. It created its Black Lives Matter commitment, the Local Business Recovery Initiative, and participated in a business coalition for marriage equality in Japan and the power of virtual learning.
Microsoft Announces Halo Infinite Pushed Back Until Fall 2021
Microsoft’s set a new launch date for Halo Infinite. The game, which was previously due out this holiday season, is now set to launch in autumn of 2021. The news comes by way of a blog post that looks to address some feedback about the game’s visuals that arose after its appearance in an Xbox Summer Showcase this year. Bungie veteran Joseph Staten writes that he joined the team at 343 Industries this year right as they were grappling with feedback from July’s demo. “The discussion boiled down to one fundamental truth: we needed more time to do things right,” he explains.
100 Thieves Wins Valorant First Strike
100 Thieves have been crowned North America’s first “Valorant” champions. After four days of matches, and a sweaty, drawn-out capstone matchup, the team beat TSM, 3–1, to win First Strike North America, the game’s first major regional tournament produced by the game’s developer, Riot Games. 100 Thieves’ first place finish marks the rapid ascendance of a team that had only solidified its lineup in early October, after tearing out the floorboards and overhauling the roster around its most famous player, the former Counter-Strike professional, Spencer “Hiko” Martin.
