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Japanese social gaming giant Gree has acquired mobile game developer Funzio in a deal worth $210m.
Funzio has developed a raft of popular free-to-play App Store titles like Modern War, Kingdom Age and Crime City, which have been downloaded over 20m times. Players can purchase extra in-game currency to progress faster in each title.
Funzio’s officers and founders will help grow Gree’s San Francisco studio. CEO Ken Chiu and COO Anil Dharni will join Gree International as senior VPs, while CTO Ram Gudavalli and VP of engineering Andy Keidel will join as VPs.
The team at Funzio is creating some of the best mobile games in the world today,” said Gree International CEO Naoki Aoyagi.
We are extremely excited to expand our mid-core portfolio and continue to show how the mobile games market is the inevitable next step for gamers worldwide.”
Funzio founder Ken Chiu added: Gree shares our vision of a mobile world where people can play together wherever and whenever they are.”
The buyout is the the latest big money move from Gree, which last month announced an investment in mobile game developer IUGO Mobile Entertainment and HTML5 developer Wizcorp. In April 2011, Gree purchased mobile games network OpenFeint for $104m.
Gree’s network reaches over 190m players worldwide and offers more than 7,500 game applications. A Gree social mobile gaming platform is set to launch in Q2 this year.
