http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-08-10-plarium-acquired-in-USD500-million-deal
The Israeli developer Plarium has been acquired for $500 million by Aristocrat, an Australian casino company seeking to expand into the mobile games business.
According to a report in the Australian Financial Review, the deal is equivalent to 10x Plarium's annual earnings before interest tax depreciation and amortisation. The company's portfolio is focused on free-to-play mobile games, like Sparta: War of Empires and Vikings: War of Clans.
Plarium is based in Herzliya in Israel, but it has 1,200 employees spread across offices in Europe, the US, and other locations in Israel. Avraham Shalel, its co-founder and CEO, will continue to lead the company once the acquisition has completed, alongside the 12 people that comprise its existing management team.
For Aristocrat, the Plarium acquisition is an attempt to diversify, expanding beyond its core business of gambling machines and social casino games. Indeed, its standing in the social casino market was vastly improved by the 2012 acquisition of Product Madness, which is now one of the five biggest publishers in the sector.
Once the Plarium acquisition is completed, it will represent 22% of Aristocrat's annual revenue, based on its results from March 2017.
"Aristocrat has continued to deliver significant growth and outstanding results in our Digital social casino business," said Aristocrat CEO Trevor Croker. "The acquisition of Plarium allows Aristocrat to expand our addressable market into logical adjacent segments in the fast growing mobile gaming market."
Limad said:
Well, let's not forget they're getting access to 250m active players for 2 bucks a pop. It's practically a steal.
More like they can get their casino business into the pockets of minors..... Lets not fool ourselves the league chests and wheel of fortune and all that other crap.. its gambling..... and there is no control over who and what age spending the money on it.
all you need to know........ highlighted in yellow.http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-08-10-plarium-acquired-in-USD500-million-deal
The Israeli developer Plarium has been acquired for $500 million by Aristocrat, an Australian casino company seeking to expand into the mobile games business.
According to a report in the Australian Financial Review, the deal is equivalent to 10x Plarium's annual earnings before interest tax depreciation and amortisation. The company's portfolio is focused on free-to-play mobile games, like Sparta: War of Empires and Vikings: War of Clans.
Plarium is based in Herzliya in Israel, but it has 1,200 employees spread across offices in Europe, the US, and other locations in Israel. Avraham Shalel, its co-founder and CEO, will continue to lead the company once the acquisition has completed, alongside the 12 people that comprise its existing management team.
For Aristocrat, the Plarium acquisition is an attempt to diversify, expanding beyond its core business of gambling machines and social casino games. Indeed, its standing in the social casino market was vastly improved by the 2012 acquisition of Product Madness, which is now one of the five biggest publishers in the sector.
Once the Plarium acquisition is completed, it will represent 22% of Aristocrat's annual revenue, based on its results from March 2017.
"Aristocrat has continued to deliver significant growth and outstanding results in our Digital social casino business," said Aristocrat CEO Trevor Croker. "The acquisition of Plarium allows Aristocrat to expand our addressable market into logical adjacent segments in the fast growing mobile gaming market."
It's a pretty impressive payday for the guys that set the company up (only about 7/8 years ago i think).
If you look at the quality of the games you can't help but feel you could produce them yourself in a few months. To make $0.5bn off the back of such simple games it quite a feat.
If the management team are staying put for the next 1/2 yrs (they won't stay put after their golden hancuffs - given they just made millions), then we can pretty much expect the same strategy for a while.
After that, who knows.
Maybe the new guys won't want to run games that to hook a few whales, with small numbers of users. Maybe they will want large number of users (to cross sell into the gambling). Here's to hoping that means a move away from uber pay to win.
on the other hand.... they need to recoup half a billion dollars.It's a pretty impressive payday for the guys that set the company up (only about 7/8 years ago i think).
If you look at the quality of the games you can't help but feel you could produce them yourself in a few months. To make $0.5bn off the back of such simple games it quite a feat.
If the management team are staying put for the next 1/2 yrs (they won't stay put after their golden hancuffs - given they just made millions), then we can pretty much expect the same strategy for a while.
After that, who knows.
Maybe the new guys won't want to run games that to hook a few whales, with small numbers of users. Maybe they will want large number of users (to cross sell into the gambling). Here's to hoping that means a move away from uber pay to win.
This company knows there's how many active players. That's revenue to advertise anything they want to us the players and make money from that.
Anything can change in game good or bad. Sounds like a bad ideal to spend anything on game until things are finalized with this deal. I suppose things could get worse. But not any worse then ISPs selling costumers browser history to the highest bidder.
Congrats to Plarium knowing when to sell I guess.It's possible. Or maybe they'll focus on developing mobile games, and their whales will be kids who got their hands on daddy's credit card :PIt's a pretty impressive payday for the guys that set the company up (only about 7/8 years ago i think).
If you look at the quality of the games you can't help but feel you could produce them yourself in a few months. To make $0.5bn off the back of such simple games it quite a feat.
If the management team are staying put for the next 1/2 yrs (they won't stay put after their golden hancuffs - given they just made millions), then we can pretty much expect the same strategy for a while.
After that, who knows.
Maybe the new guys won't want to run games that to hook a few whales, with small numbers of users. Maybe they will want large number of users (to cross sell into the gambling). Here's to hoping that means a move away from uber pay to win.
IronApex Turok said:
LOL!!!!!
so a coiner bought plarium?
Well it was a good buy. It makes sense why they bought Plarium.
It has been profitable for years, making increasing profit every year
It target market is exponential, for as long as there is advert like these one, http://prntscr.com/g8n84q able to attract 500K clicks per week or so.
Its very cheap to make+maintain, but if you do it right it has a potential to make huge profits for a long time.
The business is itself non degenerative. in a sense that you don't only need a couple of nerds only as a stuff. You can buy a printing mill, and sell comics, T-shirts, sell 2hrs ''free version'' SP-RPS games, Make a movie or two.
Expect some customer surveys in the near future... I know most of us will have to dig deep, but get ready with your comments on how to improve the game :)It could be very positive.
The old management of Plarium were no doubt looking for this exit strategy. Huge pressure on short term profits, boost immediate earning anyway possible, boost the sale price of the company.
The new management have invested half a billion dollars. They clearly aren't in for the short term, they have to be in it for the long term. This may well align their objectives far more closely to those of the customers than we ever got from Plarium.
IronApex Turok said:
Alina Phoenix said:
is the new owner willing to spend the money to migrate to html after spending 500 million dollars?Hello.
Actually, this news will not have any impact on the games themselves as well as on the features that will be implemented in the game.
Hello.
It won't affect the work of our teams on moving from Flash. All information I already gave you regarding this question is still up-to-date.Jezebel said:
http://nocamels.com/2017/08/aristocrat-buys-israeli-gaming-plarium/
Hardly worth 5 Bucs without flashplayer
That could be a good thing or a bad thing, I've seen some pretty awful player suggestions. Hopefully they'll actually play the game a bit, and not just implement whatever suggestions get the most likes or something like that.djmoody said:Expect some customer surveys in the near future... I know most of us will have to dig deep, but get ready with your comments on how to improve the game :)It could be very positive.
The old management of Plarium were no doubt looking for this exit strategy. Huge pressure on short term profits, boost immediate earning anyway possible, boost the sale price of the company.
The new management have invested half a billion dollars. They clearly aren't in for the short term, they have to be in it for the long term. This may well align their objectives far more closely to those of the customers than we ever got from Plarium.
Seeing where the new owners come from, only suggestions they would be interested in, is new ways to put more straws into your pockets. Or more "gambling/lottery" features to the game that will get people addicted in new ways.Razzer said:That could be a good thing or a bad thing, I've seen some pretty awful player suggestions. Hopefully they'll actually play the game a bit, and not just implement whatever suggestions get the most likes or something like that.djmoody said:Expect some customer surveys in the near future... I know most of us will have to dig deep, but get ready with your comments on how to improve the game :)It could be very positive.
The old management of Plarium were no doubt looking for this exit strategy. Huge pressure on short term profits, boost immediate earning anyway possible, boost the sale price of the company.
The new management have invested half a billion dollars. They clearly aren't in for the short term, they have to be in it for the long term. This may well align their objectives far more closely to those of the customers than we ever got from Plarium.
Gadheras said:
BiohazarD said:
Seeing where the new owners come from, only suggestions they would be interested in, is new ways to put more straws into your pockets. Or more "gambling/lottery" features to the game that will get people addicted in new ways.Razzer said:
That could be a good thing or a bad thing, I've seen some pretty awful player suggestions. Hopefully they'll actually play the game a bit, and not just implement whatever suggestions get the most likes or something like that.djmoody said:
Expect some customer surveys in the near future... I know most of us will have to dig deep, but get ready with your comments on how to improve the game :)It could be very positive.
The old management of Plarium were no doubt looking for this exit strategy. Huge pressure on short term profits, boost immediate earning anyway possible, boost the sale price of the company.
The new management have invested half a billion dollars. They clearly aren't in for the short term, they have to be in it for the long term. This may well align their objectives far more closely to those of the customers than we ever got from Plarium.
Hello.
Actually, the flow of work with the suggestions from players won't be changed. It still will go according to this scenario:
1. You make a suggestion in this topic.
2. I check this suggestion and reply whether it can be forwarded to devs.
3. I forward the suggestion to devs.
4. When we gather enough suggestions, we organize a meeting with devs to discuss the suggestions. They say whether these suggestions can be implemented or not.
5. After the meeting, I update the topic with the suggestions forwarded to devs.
5. Once the suggestion is implemented, I update this topic.
So, this workflow will remain the same.Well, the added features and such with the games, is not soly deppending on the players suggestions, because if they was, the game would looked quite different today than it does. When the owners ask the question "What can we do to increase/maximize revenues", wahtever effect that got on the game, the players got no influence over what so ever.Gadheras said:
something like that. Seeing where the new owners come from, only suggestions they would be interested in, is new ways to put more straws into your pockets. Or more "gambling/lottery" features to the game that will get people addicted in new ways.Hello.
Actually, the flow of work with the suggestions from players won't be changed. It still will go according to this scenario:
1. You make a suggestion in this topic.
2. I check this suggestion and reply whether it can be forwarded to devs.
3. I forward the suggestion to devs.
4. When we gather enough suggestions, we organize a meeting with devs to discuss the suggestions. They say whether these suggestions can be implemented or not.
5. After the meeting, I update the topic with the suggestions forwarded to devs.
5. Once the suggestion is implemented, I update this topic.
So, this workflow will remain the same.