News

AppOnboard acquires Buildbox game engine to power codeless development

Buildbox CEO Trey Smith has joined AppOnboard as its chief growth officer and fellow co-founder Nik Rudenko has been named VP of technology

Date Type Companies involved Size
June 13th, 2019 acquisition AppOnboard Not disclosed
AppOnboard acquires Buildbox game engine to power codeless development

Mobile demo and analytics platform AppOnboard has acquired mobile games development engine Buildbox for an undisclosed fee.

Buildbox, used for games such as Color Switch, was used to power more than 45,000 games in 2018. Titles using the engine are said to have been downloaded more than three billion times to date.

As part of the deal, Buildbox CEO Trey Smith has joined AppOnboard as its chief growth officer while fellow co-founder Nik Rudenko has been named VP of technology.

Codeless future

Both AppOnboard and Buildbox bill themselves as ‘no-code’ tools designed to be accessible to developers without any programming experience.

Earlier this year codeless instant app creator AppOnboard Studio was made available for free to all developers.

The toolset was designed to facilitate the creation of instantly accessible app demos for Google Play. This lets users quickly play part of a game before downloading the full app.

Through the Buildbox deal, AppOnboard says it now offers a “complete toolset” to design, build and publishing games and apps on the app stores without writing a single line of code.

“AppOnboard and Buildbox have long shared the mission of enabling makers, creatives, designers, artists and anyone else to become creators of mobile apps and games,” said Buildbox CEO Trey Smith.

“Today, we are excited to join forces with AppOnboard and double-down on the no-code movement to empower the maker generation to bring their ideas to life and eliminate the technical barriers to entry in mobile game and app development.”

AppOnboard CEO Jonathan Zweig added: “Buildbox is the most successful no-code game platform in the world. The team’s attention to detail and the user experience is unlike anything I have seen in my career, even going back to our founding team who built 14 of the first 100 games on the App Store.

“We are thrilled to join forces with the Buildbox team to accelerate the no-code movement and continue to build upon the massive success that many Buildbox creators have already experienced across the globe.

“AppOnboard is investing significantly in the Buildbox platform and development software to launch new features faster than ever before.”


Head of Content

Craig Chapple is a freelance analyst, consultant and writer with specialist knowledge of the games industry. He has previously served as Senior Editor at PocketGamer.biz, as well as holding roles at Sensor Tower, Nintendo and Develop.