Hot Five

Hot Five: Finnish boom as Metacore gets $180 million and Small Giant $240 million

Hottest articles of the week

Hot Five: Finnish boom as Metacore gets $180 million and Small Giant $240 million

To help you keep on top of a busy news cycle and the latest hot topics in mobile gaming, each week we round up the five most-read storieson PocketGamer.biz.

This was the news cycle for the week starting 26 April 2021.

Read on and digest...

 

5. China announces a new playtime logging system for all gamers

Another week, another turning of the screw by the CPP. This week comes news that everyone playing games in China has to log in using their national ID number and their total playtime and spending will be logged via government computers. 

 

4. Why Harry Potter: Wizards Unite failed to find the magic

It was going to prove that location-based mobile games were a thing - more than just Pokemon Go - but Happy Potter: Wizards Unite has only underlined that the interesection of successful location-based mobile games is just a circled labelled Pokemon Go. 

 

3. Why Ninja Kiwi co-founders Chris and Stephen Harris felt now was the right time to sell

Best known for its Bloons series, New Zealand developer Ninja Kiwi sold out to MTG for $142 million.

Co-founding brothers Chris Harris and Stephen Harris explain why the deal wasn't just about the money. 

 

2. Supercell lends Metacore $180 million to scale Merge Mansion

 In an interesting deal, Supercell has lent fellow Finnish studio Metace $180 million on commercial terms to scale its puzzle game Merge Mansions into a global success. 

 

1. Zynga pays Small Giant $240 million in second performance earn-out

When Zynga acquired Small Giant Games for $560 million in 2018, it also set in place three further payments based around the developer's future performance. 

The first payment - based on 2019's performance - was worth $122 million.

The second - for 2020 and now paid - was worth $240 million.

The third - for 2021 and due in 2022 - will take the total deal's well into the billion-dollar range. 


Tags:
Contributing Editor

A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.