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Disney acquires social game dev Playdom for $563.2m
Disney Interactive today announced its acquisition of social game developer Playdom. Rumor of the deal surfaced late last week, when it was suggested that Disney was ready to pay in excess of $600 million for the company. The final handshake was over a much more reasonable sum of $563.2 million (plus a "performance-linked earn-out of up to $200 million"). And now, our expert analysis of the transaction: "Sweet baby Jesus, that's so much money." Playdom, which has only been in operation for two-and-a-half-years, has created a number of successful social gaming properties that you've ... probably never heard of, including Social City, Sorority Life and Market Street. It's properties have about 42 million active players every month, which gives some indication as to why Disney was so eager to bring Playdom into its magic kingdom. Then again, maybe Ole D didn't want to be the only publisher that missed out on the recent craze over social game developers. Haven't you heard? They're all the rage.
Game-related startups raise $600 million in 2009, down 36%
Game-related startup companies raised $600 million throughout 2009, according to GamesBeat's analysis. And while $600 million is a lot of money if you're, say, trying to sell a shooter based on the art of modern warfare, it's not quite that much when you're an up-and-coming game developer. Total investments in the field were actually down by 36% since last year. That's not a bubble bursting, but it does mean that startup investors might be a little more careful with their money in the year to come. The biggest winners in the scene include Zynga, makers of Mafia Wars and a few other popular Facebook titles, who nabbed a big $180 million investment from a Russian technology company, and Playdom. You may not have played Sorority Life, the company's MySpace hit, but Lightspeed Venture Partners must have, because it invested $43 million in the company. If there's a theme here, it's social networking and online games: PopCap is probably the highest traditional game developer on the list, but even its $22.5 million investment was marked for putting its games on the web, mobile platforms, and social networks. Of course, that pull doesn't include the buck we gave them for Peggle.
