Weekly Game Investments Update #26

June 22, 2020 — June 28, 2020

Summary

• Facebook’s Oculus has acquired American VR-game developer Ready At Down, which has been previously publishing its Lone Echo game with Oculus
• Israel-based in-game apps development platform Overwolf has acquired game modifications and add-ons repository CurseForge from Amazon-owned Twitch’s subsidiary Curse
• San-Francisco-based mobile app market intelligence company Sensor Tower has acquired two apps: location sharing service StayFree and time-management tool ActionDash
• Developer and publisher of mobile casino games SciPlay Corporation (NASDAQ: SCPL) has acquired Israel-based casual mobile games developer Come2Play
• Poland-based game developer Bloober Team (WAR:BLO) is in the second round of M&A talks with six unknown potential buyers, initially, there were around twelve participants
• LA-based cooperative games developer Treehouse Games has raised $2.6m in a Seed funding round led by LVP with participation from Transcend Fund and Kristian Segestrale
• France-based video game publisher Focus Home Interactive (PAR: ALFOC) has acquired 100% shares of German PC & console game developer Deck13 Interactive GmbH for $8m with the valuation multiple of 1.3x EV / Revenue’19
• Ireland-based video game service provider Keywords Studios has acquired UK-based provider of specialized game development services Coconut Lizard for £1.35m with additional consideration of up to £0.65m is based on the performance of Coconut Lizard over the first 12 months post-completion
• Regional development project Gamecity Hamburg has supported seven startups with a total of $482k funding via its annual Prototype Funding program
• Ireland-based Esports real-money betting platform Luckbox has finished its pre-IPO financing round, raising $3.3m funding. Currently, the company is preparing for an IPO on the TSX Venture Exchange this summer
• India-based video game developer Bombay Play has raised $1.5m funding in a pre-Series A round, led by early-stage VC firm Leo Capital and Livspace co-founder Ramakant Sharma
• Danish wholesaler Dansgaard has acquired Luxembourg-based video game wholesale company PhenomGames. After the acquisition, all the team, except its founder Lee Chambers, will remain in the company
• Gaming accessories manufacturer PowerA has acquired LucidSound — a company, producing premium audio accessories for gamers. After the acquisition, PowerA will keep LucidSound’s products, brand and identity
• Portuguese esports firm Replai has raised $1.3m in a Seed round led by Bright Pixel with the participation of Ideias Glaciares, Clever Advertising and several other business angels. With this funding the company is going to expand overseas, entering the UK and the US Esports markets

Facebook has acquired VR developer Ready At Dawn Studious

💵 Acquisition
- Facebook (Oculus) has acquired American VR game developer Ready At Dawn, which is famous for Lone Echo — one of Oculus’s best-selling series VR adventure games
- Terms of the deal are not disclosed. Facebook will bring the entire team on board and Ready At Dawn will become a part of Oculus Studios but will continue working as an independent creator
- The studio has been in close partnership with Facebook subsidiary Oculus, which served as a publisher of their Lost Echo game
- Oculus and Ready at Dawn are preparing for the launch of its sequel later this year

💵 Previous Facebook Acquisitions
- By acquiring Ready At Dawn Studious, Facebook continues its VR game studio acquisition spree. It is the 3rd deal over the last few years.
- In December 2019, Facebook acquired Beat Games studio which is known for its popular VR title Beat Saber
- In February 2020, Facebook has acquired American Sanzaru Games, the developer behind Asgard’s Wrath, a game published by Oculus Studio and Oculus VR
- Earlier this week, Facebook discontinues selling its low-end the Oculus Go headset to focus on Oculus Quest

🎲 Products — Moving from Console to VR games
- Before 2017, Ready to Go was known as a console game developer, who worked on several God of War games for PlayStation, The Order:1886 for PS4 and other less famous titles
- Since 2017, Ready to Go has been focusing on VR games. The studio has made three games for the Oculus Rift headsets: Lone Echo, Echo Arena, and Echo Combat

⚙️ About Ready At Dawn Studious
- Established in 2003
- Headquarters — Irvine, California with a large office in Portland, Oregon
- Founded by Didier Malenf, Andrea Pessino and Ru Weerasuriya
- VR game development studio

Overwolf has acquired CurseForge — mods repository by Amazon’s Twitch division

💵 Acquisition
- Israel-based in-game apps development platform Overwolf has acquired game modifications and add-ons repository CurseForge from Amazon-owned Twitch’s subsidiary Curse
- CurseForge will no longer remain in the Twitch client, it will be transferred to a new dedicated desktop app on Overwolf for Mac and PC platforms
- This deal is the 2nd acquisition deal for CruseForge, which was originally created by gaming website Curse, and later acquired by Twitch in 2016
- The deal will help Overwolf to become a platform that can support mod developers, by providing them not only with marketplace, community and development toolkit, but also with money for their creativity
- In August 2018, Overwolf (the buyer) has teamed up with Intel to establish a $7m fund for supporting those creators who work on mods, custom levels and game applications.

🎲 Products
- CurseForge is one of the biggest repositories of game mods, textures, levels and other in-game features created by the gaming community
- Cruse has also organized several events and competitions for mod developers, including StarJam and Twitch DevJam 2019

⚙️ About Curse LLC (Target)
- Established in 2007
- Headquarters — Huntsville, Alabama
- Founded by Hubert Thieblot
- Game mods and apps repository

⚙️ About Overwolf (Buyer)
- Established in 2010
- Headquarters — Tel Aviv, Israel
- Founded by Alon Rabinovitz, Gil Or, Nir Finkelstein, Uri Marchand
- Team of 70 employees
- Appstore and in-game development toolkit
- The company has raised $23m up to date with the latest $16m Series B round in November 2018

Sensor Tower acquires StayFree and ActionDash mobile apps

💵 Acquisition
- San-Francisco-based mobile app market intelligence company Sensor Tower has acquired two apps: location sharing service StayFree and time-management tool ActionDash. No financial details were disclosed
- Sensor Tower is bringing all the StayFree developers on board
- Using expertise of both teams and more importantly data collected by the two apps Senior Tower is going to make a move forward as a provider of market intelligence
- In May 2020, Sensor Tower has raised $45m funding from Riverwood Capital, aimed to support growth across all material facts of the business, from hiring and marketing to infrastructure and physical expansion into new markets

🎲 Products
- The company provides enterprise-level data through personal software: Store Intelligence, Ad Intelligence, Usage Intelligence and App Intelligence

⚙️ About Sensor Tower
- Established in 2013
- Headquarters — San Francisco, United States
- Founded by Oliver Yeh and Alex Malafeev, both are app developers
- Mobile app market intelligence company
- Team of 75 employees

SciPlay has acquired mobile game developer Come2Play

💵 Acquisition
- Developer and publisher of mobile casino games SciPlay Corporation (NASDAQ: SCPL) has acquired Israel-based casual mobile games developer Come2Play for an undisclosed sum
- It is SciPlay’s first step towards the casual games sector and the company’s first acquisition after it spun off Scientific Games
- In May 2019, SciPlay has made a spin-off from Scientific Games Corporation, lottery and gambling services provider and begun trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market as part of its IPO

💵 Previous acquisitions
- In April 2017, Scientific Games acquired Spicerack Media for its mobile gaming division SciPlay. Spicerack Media is the developer behind Bingo Showdown gambling app.

🎲 Products
- Come2Play is known for its casual version of solitaire game Solitaire Pets and mobile version of backgammon game Backgammon Live

⚙️ About Come2Play
- Established in 2007
- Headquarters — Tel Aviv, Israel with additional development offices in Poltava City, Ukraine
- Team of 40 employees
- Founded by Alon Barzilay
- Mobile game developer

Bloober Team in talks with several companies over potential M&A deal

💵 Potential acquisition
- Poland-based game developer Bloober Team (WAR:BLO) is in a second round of M&A talks with six unknown potential buyers, initially there were around twelve participants
- Yet the list of potential buyers is not disclosed, it is known that three of them are headquartered in the United States, two in Poland and one in the United Kingdom
- Current market cap of the company is $70m with annual revenue of $5m and EBITDA of $1.5m

🎲 Products
- After it made a spin-off from Nibris in 2008, Bloober Team focused on the development of horror games. It is best known for such PC and console titles as Observer, Layers of Fear and Blair Witch
- Now the company is working on its new game The Medium, which is planned to be released for PC and Xbox Series X with the launch of a next generation console

⚙️ About Bloober Team
- Established in 2008, listed on the NewConnect market of Warsaw Stock Exchange since 2011
- Headquarters — Kraków, Poland
- Founded by Peter Babieno and Peter Bielatowicz
- PC and console video games developer

Treehouse Games has raised $2,6m in a seed round led by London Venture Partners

💵 Seed funding
- LA-based cooperative games developer Treehouse Games has raised $2,6m in a Seed funding round led by LVP with participation from Transcend Fund and Kristian Segestrale — CEO of Super Evil Megacorp
- This is the first investment round of the company, that will help the team to start the development of the game

🎲 Product
- Treehouse Games is a newly organized studio without any released products yet
- Treehouse Games are going to create cooperative games that can serve as platforms for social collaboration

⚙️ About Treehouse Games
- Established in 2020
- Headquarters — Los Angeles, United States
- Founded by Michael Chu, ex-lead at Riot Games, Ryan Sullivan, an indie game vetaran
- Team of six employees
- Game studio working on the development of collaborative games

Focus Home Interactive acquires Deck13 for $8m

💵 Acquisition
- France-based video game publisher Focus Home Interactive (PAR:ALFOC) has acquired 100% shares of German PC & console game developer Deck13 Interactive GmbH
- The deal size is $8m (€7.1m), of which $7.2m is in cash and $0.8m in shares. The publisher has also agreed on a long-term incentive plan for Deck 13 manager
- Deck13 generated €5.5m annual revenue in 2019 financial year, bringing valuation multiple to 1.3x EV / Revenue 2019
- Deck13 (developer) and Focus Home Interactive (publisher) have been working together since 2011 and now, as a part of the deal, all the Deck13 team will join the publisher
- This deal is the first acquisition for Focus Home Interactive, a major step in the Group’s Enhance Evolve Explore strategic plan announced in November 2018

🎯 Conclusions
-The transaction will enable the publisher to take full control of the IP created by the developer and bring game development expertise inside the business
- Focus Home Interactive will continue on making new acquisitions in the coming years having financed its future potential acquisitions with several credit lines and a revolving credit facility, total of €46m

🎲 Products
- Deck13 manages Producing, Localization, QA, Marketing, PR & Distribution
- Deck13 Interactive is best known for its latest title Lords of the Fallen and The Surge game series
- Overall, the company has developer 20+ game titles
- The developer is also known for its indie publishing division “Deck13 Spotlight” that helps independent developers bring their projects to wider audiences
- Deck13 Spotlight has also published more than 10 games, e.g. CrossCode

⚙️ About Deck13 Interactive GmbH
- Established in 2001
- Headquarters — Frankfurt, Germany
- Founded by Jan Klose and Florian Stadlbauer.
- Team of 60+ employees
- PC & console game developer, and indie game publisher

Keywords Studios has acquired Coconut Lizard for up to $2.5m

💵 Acquisition
- Ireland-based video game service provider Keywords Studios has acquired Coconut Lizard — a UK-based provider of specialized game development services
- Keywords agrees to pay non-contingent consideration of £1.35m, comprising ~£1m in cash and the remainder through the issue of new ordinary shares. The additional consideration of up to £0.65m is based on the performance of Coconut Lizard over the first 12 months post-completion

🎯 In May 2020, Keywords Studios raised $122m to acquire game development service providers affected by COVID-19. Its is the first deal since raising. We should expect further acquisitions coming from Keywords this year.

💵 Previous Acquisitions
- In December 2019, Keywords Studios made 3 acquisitions for a total sum of over $12m, buying machine translation provider Katan ($7.8m), marketing services firm Ichi Holdings ($4.2m) and recording studio Syllabes ($360k)
- Acquisitions have been an integral part of its expansion strategy, with a total of 45 completed deals to date.

🎲 Products and services
- Coconut Lizard provides specialized game development services including optimisation, porting, middleware integration and game hardening services with strong expertise in Unreal Engine
- The company worked on such titles as Sea of Thieves, Battalion Eastern Front, Conan Exiles and LawBreakers

⚙️ About Coconut Lizard
- Established in 2015
- Headquarters — Gateshead, United Kingdom
- Founded by Robert Troughton, a veteran video games programmer who successfully founded and built up game developer Pitbull Studio before selling it to Epic Games in 2014
- Team of 29 employees
- Video game technical services provider with deep expertise in the Unreal Engine

Gamecity Hamburg distributes $482k investments between seven-game studios

💵 Government support
- Regional development project Gamecity Hamburg has supported seven startups with a total of €430k ($482k) funding via its annual Prototype Funding program:
- Wild Woods by Team Octofox €80k ($89.7k)
- Out of Place by Bagpack Games €80k ($89.7k)
- Lost Sector by Team Lost Sector €73.27k ($82.2k)
- Project MORPH by THREAKS €70k ($78.5k)
- Solitaire by BeardShaker €48k ($53.8k)
- Stadtkinder by Studio Monstrum €48k ($53.8k)
- Lazor Punx by Team Radioactive Dreams €31.27k ($35k)
- Gamecity Hamburg is a joint initiative of Hamburg’s local government and city-based video game companies

🎯 The application phase for the next funding round will start in March 2021

⚙️ About Gamecity Hamburg
- Established in 2003
- Headquarters — Hamburg, Germany
- More than 2000 members
- Project on regional game industry support

UPDATE: Luckbox has raised $3.29m ahead of public listing

💵 Venture Funding
- Ireland-based Esports real-money betting platform Luckbox has finished its pre-IPO financing round, raising $3.29m funding (CAD $4.5m). Currently, the company is preparing for an IPO on the TSX Venture Exchange this summer
- Luckbox had to extend the financing round’s period, since it was heavily oversubscribed. After raising $2,8m in the first part of the round, the firm managed to secure an additional $461k funding

🎲 Platform
- Luckbox facilitates fully licensed real-money betting platform on 13 PC and mobile esports
- Luckbox is similar to Malta-based Esports Entertainment Group (NASDAQ: GMBL)
- Since March 2020, Luckbox has seen a 500% increase in betting volume. Turnover has risen to almost 13 times that seen in November 2019

⚙️ About Real Time Games Holdings Limited (known as Luckbox)
- Established in 2016
- Headquarters — Douglas, Ireland
- Founded by Lars-Kristian Lien and Mike Stevens
- Operator of online gaming and betting esports platform

Mobile game developer Bombay Play has raised $1.5m of Seed funding

💵 Seed funding
- India-based video game developer Bombay Play has raised $1.5m funding in a pre-Series A round, led by early-stage VC firm Leo Capital and Livspace co-founder Ramakant Sharma
- Bombay Play will use the investments to hire more developers and expand overseas

🎲 Products
- Bombay Play has developed two mobile card games: Card Party and 29 Card Game
- In 2019, the company developed one of two Pokémon games launched exclusively on Facebook — Pokémon Tower Battle
- Currently, Bombay Play is preparing for the launch of its new battle royal card game Lockdown Brawl

⚙️ About Bombay Play
- Established in 2017
- Headquarters — Bangalore, India
- Founded by Abhas Saroha and Oliver Jones
- Mobile game developer

Danish conglomerate Dansgaard acquires video game wholesaler PhenomGames

💵 Acquisition
- Danish wholesaler Dansgaard has acquired Luxembourg-based video game wholesale company PhenomGames
- After the acquisition, all the team, except its founder Lee Chambers, will remain in the company
- Lee Chambers decided to sell PhenomGames, because he is too busy working in his another company Essentialise Workplace Wellbeing

🎲 Products
- Initially launched as a video game e-store in 2008, PhenomGames then switched to the wholesale sector in 2014
- Now PhenomGames sells video games, accessories and merchandise to European retailers and e-tailers

⚙️ About PhenomGames
- Established in 2008
- Headquarters — Luxembourg
- Founded by Lee Chambers
- Video game wholesale company

PowerA has acquired audio accessory firm LucidSound

💵 Acquisition
- Gaming accessories manufacturer PowerA has acquired LucidSound — a company, producing premium audio accessories for gamers
- After the acquisition, PowerA will keep LucidSound’s products, brand and identity

🎲 Products
- Lucid house produces premium-quality gaming headsets, some of which are specifically designed for different types of consoles.
- In December 2019, LucidGames announced the launch of limited-edition headsets made in collaboration with Snoop Dogg for Xbox One and Xbox Series X

⚙️ About LucidSound
- Established in 2014
- Headquarters — Carlsbad, California, US
- Founded by Christopher Von Huben
- Gaming audio accessory manufacturer

Replai has raised $1.3m Seed round led by Bright Pixel

💵 Seed funding
- Portuguese esports firm Replai has raised $1.3m in a Seed round led by Bright Pixel with the participation of Ideias Glaciares, Clever Advertising and several other business angels
- With this funding the company is going to expand overseas, entering the UK and the US Esports markets

🎲 Products
- Replai developed an AI-powered algorithm that works with live-stream and videos, highlighting and clipping important moments to make real-time short-videos out of them
- The company also provides live-stream analytics tools for easier and more effective monetization

⚙️ About Replai
- Established in 2019
- Headquarters — London, UK
- Founded by João Costa and Francisco Pacheco
- Esports technology startup

David Beckham co-owned company Guild Esports is planning to raise $31m in the next financial round

💵 Future funding
- London-based newly established esports startup Guild Esports, co-owned by David Beckham, is aiming to raise £25m ($30.7m) funding bringing the company’s total valuation to £100m ($122.8)

🎲 Products
- Guild Esports is going to build a new league with multiple teams in various disciplines
- The company also plans to provide educational services and hire professional esports athletes for the coaching of its teams

⚙️ About Guild Esports
- Established in 2020
- Headquarters — London, UK
- Esports professional training provider