Playtech sold the studio to YoYo Games five years after the purchase. The amount of the transaction was only $ 10 million, and Opera presumably became the new owner of the authors of the GameMaker game engine.The completion of the deal was first reported by Reuters last week.
At the same time, Playtech also sold all its assets in the field of casual and social games, focusing on its core business — the development of gambling software.
The company acquired YoYo Games in 2015 for $16.4 million with the possibility of additional payments of $5.25 million. The total amount of the sale suggests that GameMaker developers have lost a lot in value in recent years.
Playtech has not officially named who will become the new owner of YoYo Games. However, the GameMaker Community forum is actively discussing the version that Opera can become it. This is also hinted at by the appointment of new directors at YoYo Games, among whom there are employees of the Norwegian company.
YoYo has not yet officially commented on the situation, but many GameMaker users positively assess the prospects of the deal. In particular, they hope for the appearance of normal HTML5 support in the engine thanks to the possible leadership in the person of Opera.
GameMaker: Studio is one of the most popular and easy—to-learn game engines, the latest version of which was released in August last year. Among the games developed on it are Undertale, Katana Zero, Hotline Miami 2 and Spelunky.