YoYo Games is Acquired by Playtech plc
A personal note from the founding team
Dear All,
We are excited to announce that YoYo Games has been acquired by Playtech, and we wanted to write to you personally and tell you more.
YoYo was founded by myself and a group of games industry friends and has never had any external investors aside from our own funds. This means weve relied heavily on generating revenue, mainly from GameMaker sales. While everything has gone well and weve grown to 30 people it means that we have had to sell more products before we could invest in new features, yet its the new features that generate more sales.
Most companies in this position seek external investment to break the cycle and create new products to sell. We tried to raise funds several times in order to further develop GameMaker, but the offers we were given meant giving up on a lot of what we wanted to keep doing, i.e. developing a tool that would continue to be accessible to both beginners and professionals. Our vision has always been to maintain GameMaker: Studio as affordable and great value. This is why we made the Standard Edition free last year as well as package the technology together as Master Collection.
We looked for the right company with sufficient funds, knowledge and supporting technology that matches our developers needs.
The reason we accepted the offer from Playtech was they were the first investor who didnt want to alter our vision. They havent just bought the company, theyre committed to investing in YoYo Games in a way that we have never been able to previously. With their help we can now push ahead and hire more people and make GameMaker: Studio an even better platform for casual games developers everywhere. If there are any changes they will be additions to our plans. In fact, were already working on a number of these and some of you will get a very pleasant surprise this summer.
Theyve also made us commit to launching GameMaker: Studio 2.0 later this year. In our efforts to generate sales weve not been getting our resources packed into Studio 2.0 as we would have liked. But now its all hands on deck and were really excited that Playtechs investment will help us get this done at twice the speed.
Playtechs purchase of YoYo Games means that GameMaker: Studio will get even better and were now even more committed to making GameMaker: Studio the best platform to learn how to make games, as well as a leading technology for professional developers.
The proof will come in the next few months and we cant wait to get going and show you whats in store.
Sandy, Mike, Russell and the rest of the team.
A note from Playtech
Playtech takes pride in being the biggest and most successful software supplier in the real-money gaming industry. We have, however, equally been very active in the social and casual games sector for several years and seeking new ways in which to grow this area of the business. Playtechs acquisition of YoYo Games is part of a bigger plan to further diversify our strong and growing segment in casual gaming, a segment whereby we feel we can add considerable value via a combination of many years of expertise, cutting-edge technology and market value.
Prior to acquiring YoYo Games weve made significant investments in our own in-house casual games studio entitled Plamee which currently employs more than 120 developers. You can enjoy our first launched game, Cake Story, on Facebook today. Please stay tuned for many more games to come in the coming weeks and months.
YoYo, alongside Plamee, will play a vital role in the future of Playtechs casual games strategy and, on a wider level, a vital role in the overall growth of the Playtech group.
Following the acquisition we want to reassure you all that we have no plans to change the existing operation or business focus; we plan to re-inforce, bolster and grow YoYo in order for it to become the platform of choice for all types of game developers.
We plan to continue to support the loyal community of developers and grow GameMaker: Studio. We plan to invest more resources into improving GameMaker so it will appeal to a wider developer demographic, including the advanced developer segment. We believe that the continued development of GameMaker will enable us to extend our casual games offering, and fits well with our in-house casual team at Plamee.
If you have any more thoughts, please feel free to share those with us at
ContactUs@plamee.com
Looking forward to a bright future,
Nadav Goshen, Plamee Advisor; Mor Weizer CEO Playtech
Further questions
Who are Playtech and what do they do?
Playtech (
www.playtech.com) is the worlds leading multi-channel gaming software and services supplier with more than 120 licensees in more than 20 countries.
Playtech develops unified software platforms and content for the online, land-based, retail and lottery industries, together with providing a range of ancillary services such as marketing, CRM services and hosting to its customer base which includes: retail and online brands as well as government sponsored entities, such as lotteries, focusing only on regulated markets.
Founded in 1999, Playtech is listed on the London Stock Exchange and has more than 3,900 employees located in 14 countries.
Why is Playtech looking for game development tools?
Playtech provides hundreds of in-house and third-party games and premium content. Playtech has a portfolio of more than 500 multi-channel games available across retail, online and mobile. Therefore, its obvious that great technology such as GameMaker: Studio can and will be used by Playtech to make more games for our customers. If anyone is in any doubt about the size of this business, Unity has an entire group focused on serving the real-money gaming industry. However, the focus of GameMaker will always be casual and mid-core gaming!
Will you continue to support development issues for GameMaker developers community?
Nothing will change on that front or any for that matter. We will continue to cater for and build on the loyal community GameMaker and YoYo have developed, as well as investing more resources into improving and making the system faster, more efficient, user-friendly and appeal to a wider professional games developer audience.
Will licensing options of the engine change at all?
At this stage NO, we plan to keep the licensing model as is. Like any company YoYo is constantly exploring new licensing models but it is unlikely to make large-scale changes at the near future. We are looking at ways in which we can extend the GameMaker reach within the developers community and it is more likely that we will look for ways to introduce other options to the free Standard Edition in the medium to long-term.
Will the development roadmap of GameMaker change at all in the short and long-term?
Playtech will add more resource and were working closely with the existing team to add several new features that will extend GMs capabilities. The wider plan is GameMaker 2.0. This is under development and will be completed later this year. GameMaker 2.0. will be a major release that is based on a long time roadmap that YoYo founders have shared with us based on the developers community requests, this was one of the reasons we decided to invest and acquire YoYo in the first place.
In summary, what can we expect?
We hope that by investing the needed money and expertise Playtech has into YoYo you will get a better and more complete GameMaker.
