SGN acquires TinyCo
"Buying TinyCo helps us diversify the types of games we offer"
Los Angeles mobile gaming company SGN has acquired TinyCo, the San Francisco mobile studio best known for titles like Marvel Avengers Academy and Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff. The figures involved in the deal were not disclosed.
"We are excited about bringing TinyCo into the SGN family for a number of reasons, but most of all, for their team and talent. Suli [Ali] has brought together an incredible team of designers, artists and engineers that make up TinyCo, and they have worked together to create tremendously successful and engaging games. Creatively, this is a perfect fit. Both companies are known for creating fun, high-quality, sustainable franchises that drop new content every month and have passionate fans who play multiple times a day," Josh Yguado, president and COO, told GamesIndustry.biz
"Buying TinyCo helps us diversify the types of games we offer and advance our ambition to create a mobile gaming giant."
TinyCo made headlines in 2013 when The Federal Trade Commission fined the company $300,000 over a violation of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. More recent titles, including Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff, were COPPA compliant and were not involved in the settlement.
"We are thrilled to join the SGN family, as TinyCo's games complement SGN's portfolio of games perfectly," said TinyCo's Ali.
"Being a part of SGN will enable us to continue building hugely successful games with Hollywood franchises but with SGN's resources and firepower behind us."
Last year SGN secured $130 million in investment from Korean online game publisher Netmarble Games. The deal made Netmarble SGN's largest shareholder.
SGN currently boasts 50 million monthly active users and revenue growth of more than 1000% since 2013.
"We acquired two smaller studios this past summer, and those studios are making different types of games than we've ever made before, but they still focus on pretty casual, female-skewing audiences. We're looking at several other, much larger acquisitions right now that would enter us into very different types of genres with very different users," COO Josh Yguado told GamesIndustry.biz at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco this year.