Azur Games is increasingly active in terms of M&A. The mobile publisher became the owner of 81% of the shares of the studio that developed the Mushroom Wars series of games. The amount of the transaction was not disclosed.
Mushroom Wars 2
It is known that under the terms of the agreement, the rights to the “studio brand” will remain with the original investors.
However, it is not completely clear what exactly we are talking about — only about the name of the studio Zillion Whales or also about IP Mushroom Wars.
UPDATE: A representative of Azur Games clarified that the company bought all IP. Investors retained the rights only to the Zillion Whales brand.
Speaking about the reasons for the purchase, Azur Games co-founder Dmitry Yaminsky recalled the success of the Mushroom Wars series, which has over 20 million downloads.
“The [Mushroom Wars] team doesn‘t chase the quantity, because then the chances of releasing a hit drop a lot. And it gives results — few people from the industry have received so much attention, awards and even successfully entered the console and PC markets, as it was with Mushroom Wars 2,” Yaminsky said.
Azur Games and the creators of Mushroom Wars have started working on the first joint game, but are not ready to share details yet.
Previously, the key investor of Zillion Whales was MGVC, the investment division of MY.GAMES. It invested in developers in 2018. The size of the investment was also not disclosed at that time, but it was assumed that it could amount to $1-1.5 million.
This is the second Azur Games deal in the last two weeks. At the end of August, the company announced the purchase of 30% of the French Pinpin Team.