New Zynga Purchase
One of the leading players in the social games market has acquired the creators of the social and mobile hit Draw Something – OMGPOP company for almost a quarter of a billion dollars. There is an opinion that this is one of the most successful Zynga deals.
Despite the fact that the amount of the deal has not yet been officially announced, according to some reports, the studio was sold for $ 180 million. In addition, another $30 million should be transferred to the company’s account in the future. Exactly how Zynga will pay is not yet clear. The company’s assets currently amount to about $ 2 billion, most of which is accounted for by cash and securities.
Immediately after this news, it also became known that Zynga New York was divided into two studios – Zynga New York Social and Zynga New York Mobile. The second one included, directly, the entire OMGPOP team, consisting of 40 developers, as well as employees of Astro Ape Studios purchased by Zynga in August. OMGPOP Executive Director Dan Porter has already been appointed Vice President and CEO of the new studio.
It is not yet known how the transition of OMGPOP under the wing of Zynga will affect Draw Something. Porter assures that there will be no changes in the game due to the fact that it is now in the Zynga catalog. And really, why change anything in a game that has been leading the top paid apps in the US since its release six weeks ago.
The number of downloads of Draw Something recently exceeded the mark of 25 million downloads, in the top of “Word Games” it is in first place in 84 countries, generating about 250 thousand dollars daily. So it’s no surprise that after the deal was confirmed, Zynga’s stock price jumped 2.5%.
Taking into account the position of Simon Khalaf, president and CEO of Flurry, who stated that OMGPOP was $ 800 million cheaper, we can conclude that the purchase of the authors of Draw Something is one of the most successful in the history of Zynga.
Sources: http://www.pocketgamer.biz, http://www.insidemobileapps.com
