Tap the Frog Developers Office Closed

The Ukrainian studio Playfo, the authors of the classic series of mobile games Tap the Frog, which has gained more than 50 million downloads, announced the closure of the office.

The office closed after five years of operation.

In addition to the Tap the Frog series, which included more than four projects, the studio also noted a good children’s game Epic Racers, minimalistic Mini Jump and Who’s Mining?, as well as a cute three-in-a-row Knight Girl.

We asked Playfo co-founder Vitaly Onishchenko to tell us why this happened:

Vitaly Onishchenko, co-founder of Playfo To put it very briefly: we closed the office because we ran out of money.

Game development is a costly business, even in such a small city as ours.

In 2011-2013, our Tap the Frog series of games was very successful. We hung in the top of the App Store in many countries of the world and earned a lot of money. Tap the Frog has been downloaded more than 50 million times on all platforms.

We have been supporting and updating Tap the Frog for a very long time. As a result, we decided to try ourselves in other genres. We have made several games, but unfortunately none of them has achieved such success as Tap the Frog.

In late 2015-early 2016, we launched Tap the Frog Faster, but it didn’t take off very high either. Sales were falling, and in the spring of 2016, my partner and I decided to close the office, as there was no longer enough money for salaries.

There is no action plan yet. I know for sure that we are not going to give up game development. Perhaps we will make small games, “tightening our belts”, as it was 5 years ago, and perhaps we will look for investors for large projects. Maybe we’ll try other platforms and genres, or maybe we’ll go back to Tap the Frog and make another game about frogs. Time will show.