Online gambling software company, Playtech, has revealed that it has acquired Yoyo Games Limited (Yoyo), the UK based developer of the popular cross-platform game dev tool GameMaker Studio, for the sum of US$ 16.4 million.
The acquisition includes GameMaker, which has risen in popularity in recent years among small-team game developers and is a basis for games such as Gods Will Be Watching, Spelunky, Risk of Rain, Hotline Miami, Nidhogg and Gunpoint. Playtech has revealed that the engine boasts more than 750,000 registered game developers.
Dundee based Yoyo’s Game Maker Studio (GMS), is a mobile-driven cross-platform casual game development technology that allows developers to create games with the use of a single programming code in a few hours and then publish them to run natively across most common platforms that includes Android, iOS, OS X, Xbox, HTML5, Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, Windows RT, PlayStation and Ubuntu.
The entire Game Maker family of products is said to have been downloaded over five million times.
Playtech will fund the acquisition of Yoyo Games Limited from existing cash balances while the group will hold 30% of the acquisition in trust for up to 36 months after closing so as to provide security in the event of claims.
An additional amount of US$ 5.25 million is expected to be added to the aggregate cost in respect of an earn-out consideration and a retention plan.
Playtech has revealed that the acquisition of Yoyo Games Limited is part of a three-pronged strategy into the casual games market which comprises of Playtech’s in-house game development studio, the publishing of in-house and third party games as well as games technology which includes Yoyo.
