Zynga Buys 80% of Empires & Puzzles Authors for $560 Million
She will pay approximately $11.6 million for each developer.
Empires & Puzzles
The main deal of December.
The American company Zynga has agreed to purchase 80% of the small Finnish studio Small Giant Games. This controlling stake will cost the company $560 million.
Under the terms of the deal, which will be closed on January 1, the company will pay $330 million in cash, and another $230 million in its shares. Zynga will acquire the remaining 20% of the studio within three years at a price that will depend on the future financial results of Small Giant Games.
The main and only blockbuster of Small Giant Games, which employs only 47 employees, is the mobile game Empires & Puzzles. This successful mix of buttler, three-in-a-row and construction strategy has earned $190 million in the last year alone.
Empires & Puzzles Monthly Revenue Dynamics (September 2017 – December 2018, DataMagic)
Within Zynga, the Small Giant Games studio will function as a separate division.
Its CEO Timo Soininen noted that the studio will preserve its identity, culture and creative independence.
For Zynga, the current deal is one of the largest in its history. The last time she paid more than half a billion for the company was in 2014. Then she acquired the authors of CSR Racing — British NaturalMotion — for $ 527 million.
However, this is not the first major acquisition of Zynga in recent times. In May 2018, it acquired the Turkish Gram Games for $ 250 million, and in November 2017 – Peak Games for $ 100 million.
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