US developer SciPlay has acquired Finnish social mobile games studio Koukoi Games.
The KouKoi team will be tasked with the creation of a new casual game concept for the mobile platform and will now join SciPlay’s already existing offices across Texas, Iowa, Israel and Ukraine. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Founded in 2015 and based in Oulu, Finland, Koukoi Games is best known is for co-developing mobile runner Om Nom: Run, alongside license holder ZeptoLab. Since launching in February 2020, the Cut the Rope spinoff title has earned itself over 30 million downloads.
This is the third purchase SciPlay has made in recent years. In 2017, the social casino developer picked up Spice Rack (when it was known as Scientific Games), before then acquiring Ukraine-based studio Come2Play.
“Impactful evergreen games”
“The strengths of the Koukoi team mesh perfectly with SciPlay’s strengths and we’re excited to welcome them to our Company,” said SciPlay chief executive officer of Josh Wilson.
“This is another step in the evolution of SciPlay as we continue to invest in future growth opportunities and build out our development pipeline. Together, we can build impactful evergreen games in the casual genre furthering our product and revenue diversification strategy.”
Koukoi CEO Antti Kananen added: “Our studio was founded on our passion to make casual mash-up games that blend successful attributes of multiple genres, appealing to broad audiences through engaging gameplay and deep meta storylines.
“We are thrilled to be joining SciPlay to take our games to the next level by taking advantage of their product and analytical rigour, user acquisition expertise and market scale.”
Last month, Azerion acquired social casino developer Whow games for an undisclosed amount, showing the increased interest in the genre.
More recently, Team17 acquired StoryToys, an educational entertainment app developer for $26.5 million.
