Back in February 2010, upcoming iOS publisher ngmoco swooped for veteran developer Freeverse.

It was one of the first high profile acquisitions in the space; something that could be argued kicked off the sort of M&A activity that's seen hundreds of millions spent on the likes of OpenFeint, Firemint, Chillingo, Funzio and OMGPOP.

The value of the deal wasn't disclosed, but ngmoco raised $25 million at the same time - bringing its then VC total to $40.6 million. At the time, I suggested Freeverse was likely to have cost around $10 million, give or take various longterm incentives. In hindsight, it was probably lower.

Whatever. For Freeverse's founders - the Smith brothers - it was a good payout and for ngmoco, it was money very well spent.

It went on to buy up various other studios, gaining enough scale to be bought by Japanese outfit DeNA for $303 million eight months later.

(The original $403 million headline price of that deal included $100 million in earn outs, which we assume are unlikely to have been paid given ngmoco's performance.)

His Master's Voice

But what ever happened to Freeverse?

With ngmoco based in San Francisco, the New York developer continued to work - if at arms length - on iOS games, although it seemed ill-suited to the free-to-play business model ngmoco and DeNA were committed to.

Before iPhone, Freeverse had been a full price Mac game developer and publisher.

Even on iOS, its big successes were paid games like Flick Fishing and Skee-Ball, while it has the distinction of publishing Ninja Parachute, which was Zeptolabs' first game. It wasn't anything like as successful as Cut the Rope however.

Nevertheless, it was early to in-app purchases, but as part of ngmoco, it quickly lost its identity.

Fade to black

So, over time, Freeverse faded from public view.

The last time I interviewed anyone from the company was GDC 2011, and the last game it released to the App Store under its own name was December 2010.

In that context, the news that founders Colin and Ian Lynch Smith left the company last week, with the majority of the studio laid off this week, was a surprise - if only that Freeverse had still been operating as a going concern.

I assumed it had been effectively closed months ago. After all, ngmoco's San Francisco office has had its own rounds of layoffs in the meantime.

It only goes to show that acquisitions rarely provide long term stability, especially in an industry moving as fast as the social-mobile space.

The deals work best when everyone gets something immediate out of the exchange: in that context, game M&As are more like one-night stands than marriages.

Hopefully, though, we'll get to see some start ups arising from the ashes. After all, when you're running your own company, no one can fire you.