Skip to main content
https://www.highperformancecpmgate.com/rgeesizw1?key=a9d7b2ab045c91688419e8e18a006621

Zynga and Rollic acquire the hyper-casual game studio behind High Heels

Last year, Zynga bought hyper-casual game maker Rollic. Today, Rollic is a Zynga subsidiary, and it’s announcing the acquisition of another game studio called Uncosoft.

Like Rollic, Uncosoft develops hyper-casual games and is based in Turkey (Istanbul in Rollic’s case, Izmir in Uncosoft’s). In fact, Rollic has already published a couple of Uncosoft games, most notably High Heels, in which the player navigates an obstacle course in increasingly ridiculous high heels — the company said High Heels (or, if you insist, High Heels!) has been downloaded more than 60 million times since it launched in January, and it’s even been praised for bringing “queer joy to the top of the App Store charts.”

Rollic co-founder and CEO Burak Vardal told me that when you’re in the hyper-casual gaming business, you’re “always looking for product-oriented teams.” And it sounds like Vardal is impressed by what he’s seen of the Uncosoft team, making him confident that it can successfully build “new titles like High Heels.”

“Producing a game together as development studio and publisher, you already start working like a merged company,” he said. “You argue about game design all day, you share strategies […] and you — not on purpose — start learning about how that company operates, how are the founders, how is the art team.”

Zynga completes its acquisition of hyper-casual game maker Rollic

Meanwhile, Uncosoft CEO Edip Enes Çakır said in a statement that there has been “unprecedented harmony” between the two teams as they’ve worked together in recent years, and that “our culture and vision of making global games will be augmented with the expertise of Rollic and Zynga.”

Rollic was actually Zynga’s fourth acquisition in Istanbul, so it’s clear that the city and country are becoming a bit of a hub. Vardal said Rollic does have partners outside of Turkey, but he suggested that the country has been particularly successful with hyper-casual games because of its huge student population.

Verdal also suggested that High Heels points to a path that other hyper-casual games might follow to success: namely, TikTok.

“The animations of the game and the character mechanic are what we call TikTok-able,” he said. “It had a huge impact in Gen Z and huge organic reach in TikTok […] The new generation wants content that feeds that ecosystem.”

The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Zynga CEO says he’s on the lookout for more acquisitions

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Uber co-founder Garrett Camp steps back from board director role

Uber co-founder Garrett Camp is relinquishing his role as a board director and switching to board observer — where he says he’ll focus on product strategy for the ride hailing giant. Camp made the announcement in a short Medium post in which he writes of his decade at Uber: “I’ve learned a lot, and realized that I’m most helpful when focused on product strategy & design, and this is where I’d like to focus going forward.” “I will continue to work with Dara [Khosrowshahi, Uber CEO] and the product and technology leadership teams to brainstorm new ideas, iterate on plans and designs, and continue to innovate at scale,” he adds. “We have a strong and diverse team in place, and I’m confident everyone will navigate well during these turbulent times.” The Canadian billionaire entrepreneur signs off by saying he’s looking forward to helping Uber “brainstorm the next big idea”. Camp hasn’t been short of ideas over his career in tech. He’s the co-founder of the web 2.0 recommendatio...
Post a Comment
Read more

Drone crash near kids leads Swiss Post and Matternet to suspend autonomous deliveries

A serious crash by a delivery drone in Switzerland have grounded the fleet and put a partnership on ice. Within a stone’s throw of a school, the incident raised grim possibilities for the possibilities of catastrophic failure of payload-bearing autonomous aerial vehicles. The drones were operated by Matternet as part of a partnership with the Swiss Post (i.e. the postal service), which was using the craft to dispatch lab samples from one medical center for priority cases. As far as potential applications of drone delivery, it’s a home run — but twice now the craft have crashed, first with a soft landing and the second time a very hard one. The first incident, in January, was the result of a GPS hardware error; the drone entered a planned failback state and deployed its emergency parachute, falling slowly to the ground. Measures were taken to improve the GPS systems. The second failure in May, however, led to the drone attempting to deploy its parachute again, only to sever the line...
Post a Comment
Read more

How the world’s largest cannabis dispensary avoids social media restrictions

Planet 13 is the world’s largest cannabis dispensary. Located in Las Vegas, blocks off the Strip, the facility is the size of a small Walmart. By design, it’s hard to miss. Planet 13 is upending the dispensary model. It’s big, loud and visitors are encouraged to photograph everything. As part of the cannabis industry, Planet 13 is heavily restricted on the type of content it can publish on Instagram, Facebook and other social media platforms. It’s not allowed to post pictures of buds or vapes on some sites. It can’t talk about pricing or product selection on others.   View this post on Instagram   A post shared by Morgan Celeste SF Blogger (@bayareabeautyblogger) on Jan 25, 2020 at 7:54pm PST Instead, Planet 13 encourages its thousands of visitors to take photos and videos. Starting with the entrance, the facility is full of surprises tailored for the ‘gram. As a business, Planet 13’s social media content is heavily restricted a...
3 comments
Read more