Virtuos has today announced its first acquisition in the Eastern Europe market, acquiring Ukrainian art production studio Volmi Gamesfor an undisclosed amount.
The acquisition is seen as “a key part to Virtuos’ growth strategy”, better meet client demands, and allow access to Ukraine’s tech talent.
With the acquisition of Volmi, the Ukrainian company will be rebranded as ‘Volmi – A Virtuos Studio’.
“What Volmi has achieved in the five years since its inception is truly remarkable. We are excited to leverage the team’s deep art production expertise and high growth potential to ensure our continued success,” commented Virtuos CEO Gilles Langourieux.
Virtuos has made other notable acquisitions in recent years, such as Dublin-based Black Shamrock in 2017 and CounterPunch Studios in 2020.
Origins of Volmi
Co-founded in 2016 by CEO Vladimir Loban and COO Miroslav Baranenko, both of whom previously held leadership positions at Wargaming Kyiv, the Volmi team has since grown to 140 employees.
Volmi has experience in producing photorealistic content, illustrations, animation and more for video games, including Diablo 2: Resurrected, Smite, Paladins, and Gwent: The Witcher Card Game.
Baranenko and Loban are confirmed to be staying with the company, now working as operations director and general director respectively.
“Supported by Virtuos’ global portfolio of AAA projects, end-to-end art production and full-stack game development solutions, we are confident of accelerating Volmi’s growth and moving up the value chain to provide even better content for our clients,” said Loban.
Baranenko commented, “Both Virtuos and Volmi are culturally aligned in our pursuit of excellence and having talent development at the core of our businesses. Together with Virtuos’ support, we aim to grow the Volmi team from about 140 to 500 employees within three years, in tandem with our wider growth ambitions.”
Recently, Stillfront Group became set to fully acquire 6Waves for an initial consideration of $201 million, with 92 per cent payable in cash and the remaining 8 per cent in newly issued Stillfront shares.
