Keywords buys Sperasoft for $27 million
Services company eyes co-development with its latest acquisition
Keywords has further grown its network of studios with yet another acquisition, buying Sperasoft Inc and Sperasoft Studio for a combined fee of $27 million.
The deal comprises $22 million in cash, with $1 million of that fee deferred until the deal's first anniversary. The remaining value was provided in the form of 260,049 new shares in Keywords, which will also be issued a year from the closing date. Sperasoft's founders - Igor Efremov, Alexei Kudriashov and Mark Rizzo - will remain at the company.
Sperasoft was founded in 2004, and has built a team of 400 engineers and artists across studios in Saint Petersburg and Volgograd in Russia, Krakow in Poland, and its headquarters in Santa Clara, California.
The company provides a range of services associated with development and live operations, but Keywords emphasised full game development and co-development in its statements about the acquisition. Specifically, Sperasoft's Saint Petersburg team recently worked alongside five Ubisoft studios on Assassin's Creed: Origins
"The acquisition of Sperasoft provides us with an entry point into co-development, positioning us as a strategic partner to games developers at the early stages of the games development lifecycle," said Keywords CEO Andrew Day.
"As games are becoming bigger and are higher definition, game developers are increasingly relying upon co-development arrangements with companies like Sperasoft to provide them with broader capability to develop both initial games and additional content and features post launch."
Sperasoft doubled its revenue from $10.4 million in 2015 to anb expected $20 million for calendar 2017. It expects EBITDA of $2 million for this year.