Back when it raised an additional $25 million in funding, and bought iPhone publisher Freeverse, ngmoco CEO Neil Young said the company was looking for future acquisitions.

And now it's fulfilled that promise, buying Stumptown Game Machine, for an undisclosed sum.

It's not looked too far from home however as it already publishes the Portland, Oregon studio's Touch Pets Dogs.

Smart thinking

Founded by Andrew Stern - one of the brainiacs behind the Facade AI tech demo, and creator of the Petz brand for Ubisoft - the acquisition also sees Richard Evans, the AI expert behind Lionhead's Black & White, and The Sims 3 for EA, join the company.

“Ngmoco has been an incredibly supportive and creative partner from the beginning of Touch Pets Dogs,” said Andrew Stern.

“Formally joining the team strengthens our collaboration and creates the opportunity to make exciting new games.

To date, Touch Pets Dogs - which is free-to-play - has been downloaded over five million times. The companies are working on another game in the Touch Pets series too.

Warm embrace

"The idea of getting acquired just clicked and made sense," Stern told Gamasutra.

"It gave us the resources to grow more and do even bigger, more exciting, innovative products together. The vision that ngmoco has, and I have, for the project I want to make is very well-aligned, so it just made sense to join forces."

Stumptown will continue to be run as a separate studio within what's called the ngmoco family of companies, alongside Freeverse and Epic Pet Wars developer Miraphonic, which was the first company ngmoco bought in November 2009.

[source: BusinessWire]