Acquisitions News, Tips, Tricks & Ideas

The user-generated content marketplace Overwolf has snapped up Nitropay.

UK developer and insights firm Playmob has been acquired by Sphaira Innovation for an undisclosed sum.

Phoenix Games has acquired live operations firm PopReach Games India.

Linden Lab, the developer of Second Life, has sold its payments business, Tilia, to Thunes.

Sign up for the GI Daily here to get the biggest news straight to your inbox

Embracer CEO Lars Wingefors has acknowledged it's «way too early» for the company to «start talking about» acquiring new studios.

Embracer have announced that they're selling Borderlands developers Gearbox Entertainment to Take-Two Interactive, owners of 2K Games and GTA 6 developers Rockstar, for $460 million in Take-Two shares. Three Gearbox Software studios - the flagship studio in Texas, together with Gearbox Montréal and Gearbox Quebec - will change hands as part of the deal. Take-Two will also acquire the Borderlands and Tiny Tina's Wonderlands franchises, together with Homeworld, Risk of Rain, Brothers in Arms and Duke Nukem.

Thunderful has entered an agreement to sell Headup for €500,000.

The executive team of Bidstack have bought back the in-game advertising platform from investors and shareholders.

Sensor Tower has acquired mobile marketing firm Data.ai for an undisclosed sum, which will involve an unknown number of layoffs from the latter's workforce.

Sign up for the GI Daily here to get the biggest news straight to your inbox

Turtle Beach, the accessories giant best known for its gaming headsets, has acquired PDP for the value of $118 million.

Sign up for the GI Daily here to get the biggest news straight to your inbox

Virtuos has acquired the Los Angeles-based VFX studio Beyond-FX for an undisclosed sum.

Sign up for the GI Daily here to get the biggest news straight to your inbox

Grom Social Enterprises has announced the acquisition of studio Arctic7.

Former Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick is reportedly interested in acquiring TikTok.

Sign up for the GI Daily here to get the biggest news straight to your inbox

Sign up for the GI Daily here to get the biggest news straight to your inbox

Indie game studio and publisher Monumental has entered another agreement to acquire mobile developer Game Circus.

Austin-based developer Monumental has entered into an agreement to acquire gaming publisher and web portal Kongregate for an unknown sum.

Private equity firms CVC Capital Partners and Haveli Investments have agreed to acquire RuneScape maker Jagex for an undisclosed sum.

From Software owner Kadokawa has purchased Japanese development studio Acquire for an undisclosed sum.

FromSoftware's parent company Kadokawa Corporation has bought Octopath Traveler developer Acquire for an undisclosed sum.

Sign up for the GI Daily here to get the biggest news straight to your inbox

Microsoft has responded to claims by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that its decision to make mass layoffs in its gaming division contradicts statements it made in court about how it would run Xbox after acquiring Activision Blizzard.

Mobile developer and publisher TapNation has acquired the AI-powered platform UA Hero.

Sign up for the GI Daily here to get the biggest news straight to your inbox

Video game music publisher Materia Music has acquired Australian gaming record label Boss Battle Records.

Keywords Studios has acquired The Multiplayer Group from cloud technology firm Improbable for £76.5 million.

Toge Productions has acquired Mojiken Studio, developers of A Space for the Unbound.

Aonic has acquired VR developer NDreams for approximately $110 million.

Sign up for the GI Daily here to get the biggest news straight to your inbox

Sign up for the GI Daily here to get the biggest news straight to your inbox

Sign up for the GI Daily here to get the biggest news straight to your inbox

2023 is being touted as one of the greatest years in gaming. With major releases like Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Spider-Man 2, and Starfield coming from the big three publishers, plus plenty of third-party hits, there are more great games this year than we know what to do with. Meanwhile, there have been close to over 6,000 layoffs across the games industry in the same time, impacting companies like Bungie, Epic Games, and more. But the primary reason for the huge number of redundancies isn’t because of something that happened in the last 12 months, but a trend that’s steadily grown for the past two years.

Recent years have been dominated by mergers and acquisitions in the games industry, with the likes of Microsoft, Sony, EA, Take-Two Interactive, Embracer Group, and others having made a number of purchases to add to their internal portfolio of development studios. 2023 has, of course, seen some slowdown on that front, but with Microsoft’s massive $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard now finally having gone through after a drawn-out approval process, it seems like the next year will see increased activity once again.

Following a relatively quiet third quarter, games industry investment and deals are expected to rise steadily over the next 12 months.

Higher-ups within Disney reportedly want to go all in on the gaming industry, ending its current practice of licencing out its properties to other studios. It's said that they want to pull this off by making huge acquisitions, citing EA as an example of the kind of company Disney apparently has its sights on.

The former president and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment America, Shawn Layden, has shared his concerns about what he believes to be threats to the games industry, and warned that acquisitions can serve as “an enemy of creativity”. 

Humble Bundle EVP and general manager, Alan Patmore, has suggested studio acquisitions and first-party development could be a part of Humble Games' future.

This Week in Business is our weekly recap column, a collection of stats and quotes from recent stories presented with a dash of opinion (sometimes more than a dash) and intended to shed light on various trends. Check back every Friday for a new entry.