Israeli gaming company, CrazyLabs (formerly TabTale) has been acquired by Swedish gaming giant, Embracer -- $11.5 billion market cap (according to Yahoo Finance). The companies have yet to reveal the amount, but did note that it would include a combination of shares and cash.
Over 4.5B downloads
The announcement said that CrazyLabs, a top #3 mobile game publisher, is expected to significantly upgrade Embracer’s publishing and mobile content skills. The Israeli company has totaled, to date, more than 4.5 billion downloads on various mobile platforms, and boasts nearly 110 million active monthly users. The company’s most popular game -- Super Stylist -- has 60 million downloads to date.
In the gaming scene, the acquiring company is nothing less than a giant, and one that you probably never knew existed. The company started as a board games distributor in 2010 called Nordic Games. Over time, Embracer, which was founded by Swedish entrepreneur Lars Wingefors, saw its appetite grow, gobbling up popular gaming companies, like THQ -- which later became THQ Nordic, and eventually Embracer. The company’s M&A game has been on high in recent years, adding hundreds of millions of dollars worth of companies to its portfolio. Among some of the more popular acquisitions we find Borderlands, Saints Row, Goat Simulator, Dead Island, Metro, TimeSplitters and Darksiders, and these are just some of the titles.
As part of the acquisition, Crazy Labs is expected to continue to operate as an independent company under DECA Games, a German company owned by Embracer. In addition to the announcement of the acquisition of the Israeli company, the Swedish buyer announced its plans to acquire more companies in the coming days. According to reports abroad, the shopping spree has already begun with the acquisition of a French game studio called DigixArt - which developed, among other things, the game Lost in Harmony.
CrazyLabs was founded in 2010, and about two years ago announced a collaboration with Sony - where the Israeli company developed games based on the Japanese company’s most popular movies. At the time, the company boasted revenues of about $100 million, a goal that quite a few companies dream to reach.
"In these exhilarating times for mobile games we are extremely happy to join forces with the whole Embracer family and the DECA Group in particular. We are confident that this is a jump forward for CrazyLabs on our journey of becoming the top publisher and developer of casual and hyper-casual games and anticipate in excitement what's yet to come!," says Sagi Schliesser, CEO CrazyLabs.
Just prior to the Swedish purchase, CrazyLabs acquired Firescore Interactive -- a casual and hyper-casual game developer studio -- based in Mumbai, India, for an undisclosed price. .
