Evening Digest: New Keywords Deal, Crossy Road Earnings with IAP, Announcement from Madfinger

While the industry is waiting for announcements from Cologne, where Gamescom will open tomorrow, we briefly go through the business news of the gaming industry for August 20. 

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Swedish Toadman Interactive received $330 thousand as an investment. The investor was Craig Fletcher, founder and former director of Multiplay, which is known in the UK as an organizer of various gaming events.

The amount received by Toadman cannot be called large, but the studio itself is not yet large. It was founded in 2013 by employees who participated in the creation of Battlefield 4, Mad Max and Just Cause. During this period, she did not have time to become famous, but her employees hope that everything will change in the near future.

Toadman Interactive is currently developing three games at once. This fall, the release of one of them is scheduled — the sci-Fi action movie Immortal: Unchained.

Continuation of the banquet

The British group of companies Keywords Studios continues a series of acquisitions of gaming outsourcers. Her next acquisition was Studio Studio Gobo. The latter took part in the development of For Honor.

The deal cost Keywords Studios $33 million. She does not intend to change anything in the work of Studio Gobo yet. The management also remains the same.

For Keywords Studios, this is the sixth deal in a year. Last December, Sperasoft joined the group, which also has a St. Petersburg office.

Progress

A successful path

Sensor Tower again shared an insider about the earnings of game developers. This time she reported that the hyper-casual hit Crossy Road earns well not only from advertising. Since its release in 2015, the game has raised $10 million on IAP alone. The USA is responsible for 80% of the amount.

But the game earned more on advertising. It took only three months for the project to earn a similar amount on video.

Monsters break records

The latest iteration of the dragon hunter simulator Monster Hunter: World continues to delight its publisher Capcom and threatens to be one of the most successful releases of 2018.

Since its release in January, shipments of the game to stores, including digital sales, have totaled 10 million. Today, Monster Hunter: World is the most successful game in the series, with total shipments and sales of 50 million.

Announcements

The Czechs are back to their old ways

Less than a year has passed since the worldwide release of Shadowgun Legends, and the Czechs from Madfinger are announcing a new part of the franchise. The new game is called Shadowgun War Games. Despite the fact that visually it almost does not differ from Legend, its positioning is completely different. Now it’s an esports PvP shooter, not a mobile Destiny. The game will be released in 2019.

The alleged use of assets from the previous game, as well as the haste with which Madfinger is going to bring out a new title, may be due to the low commercial performance of Shadowgun Legends. According to DataMagic, in July the game on both platforms earned less than $ 100 thousand, which is not enough for a project of this level.