Non-Stop Games, a Singapore based gaming studio, also creator of the Heroes of Honor, has just announced that they are joining King, the publisher of the popular Candy Crush Saga.
“Today marks a huge milestone in the story of Nonstop Games: We’re becoming a part of a larger company with much bigger resources both in terms of recruiting, marketing and distribution,” reads the official blog post from the company.
The blog post reads further:
“We have known both Riccardo and Sebastian from King (CEO and Chief Creative Officer, respectively, both co-founders) for a some time now and have had a lot of respect for them as veterans in the business. Watching them progress the company from a skill games portal to #1 in Facebook games and then to a leader in mobile games space has been a tremendous inspiration for us.
When we started talking more in depth we discovered how similar the two companies were in terms of values and in their approach to creating games. Both Nonstop Games & King value teams with high level of independence, are passionate about creating games and encourage individuality.
As the talks progressed we felt that King would be the natural home for Nonstop Games and would help us reach our ambitions of creating global games, so we’re now taking the next big leap with King.
All the founders and employees of Nonstop Games will stay, and we will continue to work on great new titles. We will continue to operate Heroes of Honor as before.”
King Stock Plummets
However, things might not be as rosy as it seems: earlier today, King’s company stock was down 25% due to a big miss in its quarterly report. While gamers spent $16 million on mobile games last year, and King captures a huge chunk of that, much of the company’s value comes from just a few games, wrote Jeffrey Grubb of Venture Beat. The company also shared that is it cutting its expectations for 2014.
“While our second quarter gross bookings came in below our expectations leading us to reduce our outlook for full-year 2014 growth rates, from a profitability perspective, the business continued to perform well,” King chief executive Riccardo Zacconi said in a statement.
In the same statement, King revealed that Singapore studio Nonstop Games will join the company for $6 million in cash, and may owe another $84 million to Nonstop’s owners depending on the revenue performance of its games under King over a four-year period. The move was made to enhance and develop more games for a diverse set of platforms. Out of the $84 million, $16 million is reserved for the Nonstop’s senior staff’s earn out, and another $10 million is used to pay some Nonstop Games employees in exchange for working at King for a year, according to the company’s financial report.
Is it a wise move for Nonstop Games to join King? Only the team knows.
Nonetheless, it is still a huge win for Nonstop Games. Congratulations!