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Regulation rumors drop GREE founder's shares by $700m
GREE founder Yoshikazu Tanaka lost about $700 million over the past two days when shares of GREE plunged 23.3 percent on Monday, then another 0.1 percent today. The rapid decline was caused by a Yomiuri report stating that Japan's Consumer Affairs Agency was considering regulating the Japanese social games industry.The aspect of Japanese social games that the agency is rumored to disapprove of is the "complete gacha" style of microtransaction, in which players pay for randomized items, earning additional in-game rewards for completing a set. This could be construed as a form of lottery, which is illegal as a sales incentive in Japan.GREE officially declined to comment to the Wall Street Journal about the potential impact of a ban on these microtransactions, noting that there were other ways to build revenue. However, we suspect Tanaka himself has a different view on the potential financial impact, having already seen it happen. GREE and other social gaming companies have announced plans to self-regulate their games, creating industry guidelines and imposing spending caps.This (what's the opposite of a windfall?) happened just a week after GREE announced its purchase of Funzio, developer of social games including Crime City.
GREE picks up Funzio for $210 million
You might remember GREE as the Japanese social network that picked up OpenFeint around this time last year. Since then, the company has been, like Zynga, Mobage, and a few other giant social networks, looking to pick up social and iPhone/mobile developers to make games for its millions of users to play. And GREE's latest target is Funzio. The developer of Kingdom Age and Crime City on the iPhone has reportedly been acquired for the sum of US$210 million. The name of the game here is users. GREE has earned tons of them, both in Japan and overseas, and needs content and games to keep them interested and growing. So Eastern companies like GREE are turning to Western devs like Funzio (which is based in San Francisco) to make content for them. We're right in the middle of this trend, so we can expect to see more big purchases like this, from GREE and other networks, yet to come.
Jamil Moledina leaves EA Partners for Funzio
Jamil Moledina, one-time executive director of GDC and the man behind EA Partners' digital business (Shank, DeathSpank, etc), has left EA to join Funzio. Those of you who follow executive departures have probably guessed already, but Funzio is a developer of social games. Specifically, according to the press release, it does "action-packed AAA quality social games for mobile, Facebook, and Google+." The only title listed on Funzio's website is Crime City, a Facebook and iPhone title about building a city (of crime, presumably). Moledina will take up the role of vice president of business development. Personally, we'll keep pretending that Moledina left EA to hang out with Funzio Auditore da Firenze, Ezio's cousin. He's not that great at killing people, but he will assassinate your funny bone ... with gags.
