Online gambling technology company PlayTech has acquired GameMaker creator YoYo Games for around £10.65m ($16.4m).
An additional £3.4 million ($5.25 million) may also be paid out depending on performance as part of an earn-out clause in the deal.
Founded in 2007, the Dundee, Scotland based Yoyo Games is the creator of Game Maker: Studio (GMS) which is a mobile driven cross-platform casual games development technology that allows developers to create games using a single programming code and publish them to run natively across most common platforms including iOS, Android, OS X, HTML5, PlayStation, Xbox, Ubuntu, Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8.
According to PlayTech, the GameMaker suite of products has been downloaded over five million times and has attracted more than 750,000 registered game developers to date.
PlayTech said the acquisition forms part of its strategy to penetrate the casual games market.
“PlayTech’s directors believe that the continued development of the GMS technology within the company will enable it to extend beyond the current games developers base, and will fit well with its in-house casual team, extending its expertise and know-how in the development of casual games, marketing systems and related infrastructure,” the company said.
“This acquisition will enable the company to further diversify its business, benefiting from a combined B2B/B2C offering focused on a strong and growing segment of the wider gaming market.”
PlayTech also owns game dev studio Plamee, which employs 120 developers.
According to LinkedIn and Twitter profiles, YoYo Games CEO, Sandy Duncan, has stepped down following the acquisition. He is now acting as a consultant for the firm at Ferno Technology.
