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Traditional book publishing meets gaming as Hachette UK acquires Neon Play

UK's second largest publishing group diversifies

Date Type Companies involved Size
June 17th, 2016 acquisition Hachette UK
Neon Play
Not disclosed
Traditional book publishing meets gaming as Hachette UK acquires Neon Play

Mobile game development firm Neon Play has been acquired by Hachette UK, the UK's second largest book publishing group.

Neon Play, which is based in the Gloucestershire market town of Cirencester, was founded in 2010 and has since released more than 30 games - including work with established brands such as Ben 10.

Famously, it was also the developer who's Paper Glider game was the 10th billion app download from the Apple App Store. 

It will continue to operate as an autonomous entity following Hachette UK's acquisition.

On the same page

"[We] have huge ambitions for the growth of Neon Play and I’m delighted that, in Hachette, we’ve found an owner who is as enthusiastic about our business as we are," said Neon Play CEO Oli Christie.

"In fact, we think it’s the perfect meeting of minds."

Neon's Oli Christie (left) and Mark Allen

Tim Hely Hutchinson, CEO of Hachette UK, is similarly enthusiastic about his company first step into the world of mobile gaming.

“For some time Hachette has been developing a plan to diversify into the games market," he explained.

"This is both to provide opportunities for our authors to be published in a new dimension, and also to pursue more generally our aim to generate rapid growth on a variety of digital platforms."

“We have been looking for a bold, creative, well managed and highly successful games studio and we have found it in Neon Play.”

Features Editor

Matt is really bad at playing games, but hopefully a little better at writing about them. He's Features Editor for PocketGamer.biz, and has also written for lesser publications such as IGN, VICE, and Paste Magazine.