Jagex investment

Cambridge, UK – Tuesday 8 ^th February, 2011 - Jagex Limited, a leading independent developer and publisher of online games, today announced it has accepted a new investment from Insight Venture Partners, Spectrum Equity Investors and The Raine Group. The investment will enable Jagex to accelerate growth of its development and publishing capabilities in support of continued enhancement of the Studio’s portfolio of award-winning games.

“Insight has been part of the Jagex family for a number of years and it has been a real pleasure to serve alongside them on the Jagex board”, said Mark Gerhard, Chief Executive Officer of Jagex, who will continue to lead the company following the investment. “Both Spectrum and Raine bring a wealth of expertise and it gives me great delight to be able to welcome them to the Jagex team. It’s a great privilege to serve alongside such esteemed individuals and their wider organizations. This investment will hugely benefit both the Jagex team and our loyal community and I’m confident that Jagex will continue to go from strength to strength. I fully expect that the collective experience of the shareholder base will be highly advantageous as we embark on our next chapter of growth.”

Jagex is the UK’s largest independent games developer and publisher, with dedicated user base of millions playing Jagex’s games worldwide. The Company’s flagship game, RuneScape ( www.RuneScape.com), holds numerous Guinness World Records, including that of the world’s most popular free-to-play massively multi-player online game (MMOG).  In addition to Jagex’s in-house development, the company also acts as a 3rd party publisher for developers of great content. Jagex recently published its first 3 ^rd party title, War of Legends ( www.WarofLegends.com), and the company intends to release numerous 3 ^rd party games throughout the next 12 months.

“Jagex has long held a leadership position in bringing to market innovative, entertaining and sophisticated online games”, said Jeff Horing, Managing Director at Insight Venture Partners. “Jagex’s team has been developing several new games in the same tradition; our new investment will help accelerate their successful launch.”

Brandon Gardner, a Partner at Raine, commented, “Jagex is the standout player in one of the most attractive and fastest growing segments of the games industry. We are excited with both the near- and long-term growth opportunities at the company, and look forward to working with Jagex’s founders and management team to continue to develop their industry-leading MMOG platform.” 

Jim Quagliaroli, Managing Director of Spectrum Equity Investors, further noted, “We are very pleased to support Jagex’s growth. RuneScape is a highly successful free-to-play and subscription-based online game with an enormous community of virally-generated players.  We look forward to supporting new growth initiatives as the Jagex team builds on RuneScape’s global franchise.”

As part of the investment, Chris Mitchell and Jim Quagliaroli of Spectrum Equity, and Brandon Gardner and John Salter of Raine, will join Jagex’s board of Directors. Mark Gerhard, along with Jeff Horing and Alex Crisses from Insight Venture Partners, will continue to serve as Directors of the company.

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About Insight Venture Partners

Founded in 1995 Insight Venture Partners is a leading growth oriented, entrepreneur focused venture capital and private equity firm focused on expansion and late stage investments in the global software, Internet, and data services industries.  Insight’s team is composed of experienced investors and operating executives with more than 150 years of collective experience in its focal industries.  With almost $5 billion raised since inception and a large network of technology industry experts, Insight provides strong support to its portfolio companies.  In 2009 Insight was named among the Top Ten VC’s Globally by Red Herring Magazine.  www.insightpartners.com   

About The Raine Group

The Raine Group is a boutique merchant bank focused exclusively on entertainment, digital media and sports.  Founded in 2009 by Joseph Ravitch and Jeffrey Sine, in partnership with WME Entertainment, Raine has offices in New York, Los Angeles, Palo Alto and Beijing.  With a global reach, Raine focuses on growth equity investments where its deep industry experience and unique network of strategic relationships, limited partners and advisory board members can create value for portfolio companies.

About Spectrum Equity Investors

Spectrum Equity Investors is a private equity firm focused on investing in profitable, growing businesses.  Founded in 1994 with offices in Boston and California, Spectrum manages over $4.7 billion in capital across six funds.  Spectrum has been an active investor in online media franchises including Ancestry.com (NASDAQ: ACOM), Demand Media (NYSE: DMD), and SurveyMonkey, as well as electronic information service providers such as iPay Technologies (acquired by Jack Henry & Associates), Passport Health Communications, RiskMetrics Group (acquired by MSCI), Seisint (acquired by LexisNexis/Reed Elsevier), and World-Check.

About Jagex Limited

Jagex Games Studio is a multi-award winning games developer and publisher based in Cambridge, England. Jagex specializes in the development of high quality online games and is the largest independent games developer and publisher in the UK.

Jagex has a long-standing reputation for creating the world’s best online games and for developing hugely popular, fun, high quality, compelling, accessible, free games and for its passion to provide an   awesome social community experience for hundreds of millions of players around the world. Jagex has developed and self-published over 40 online titles including the world’s most popular free online multiplayer game, www.RuneScape.com.  

PR Contacts

Jagex:  Adam Tuckwell ( adam.tuckwell@jagex.com)  

Insight Venture Partners:  Erica Harris ( eharris@insightpartners.com)

Spectrum Equity Investors: Kathy Yager ( kathy@spectrumequity.com)

The Raine Group:  Mary Beth Grover / Brendan McManus ( mbg@abmac.com / bfm@abmac.com)