Social publisher 6waves Lolapps (6L) has acquired Texas outfit Escalation Studios.

The two companies had previously worked together with Escalation developing the publisher's first iOS game Yeti Town.

Terms of the deal weren't revealed.

"We will double our business in 2012 and mobile will play a significant role in our growth on both the publishing and development sides of our business," said Rex Ng, CEO of 6L.

"This addition to our team brings some of the mobile gaming industry's most impressive talent into our fold and sends a clear signal that we are as serious about innovation in mobile as we have been in social."

Following the trend

The deal comes as Hong Kong-based 6L - like companies such as Zynga, CrowdStar and MindJolt - looks to push from its position on Facebook into a more platform-agnostic social-mobile play.

The now 230-strong company, which was formed by the merger of 6Waves and San Francisco-based Lolapps in July 2011, has plans for 35 releases in 2011, both from internal and third party sources.

As well as its work with the publisher, Escalation developed games for Glu Mobile, releasing Space City as part of its gPartners program, also working on the iPhone version of id Software's Doom Resurrection in 2009.

"We realised the 6L guys had most of what we wanted. They had a platform, worldwide distribution and so the conversation got steered away from publishing toward acquisition," commented Escalation's Marc Tardif.

Escalation Studios' co-founders Tom Mustaine and Marc Tardiff will become design directors, while co-founder Shawn Green will become director of engineering for 6L.

[source: PRnewswire]