Last June, Take-Two Interactive, the world leader in the interactive entertainment industry, bought Zynga Inc., which has many companies in Turkiye, including Rollic. Today, local game company Rollic announced that it has acquired Popcore, an independent mobile game studio based in Germany. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Pointing to global growth by acquiring Germany-based game studio Nanotribe in February 2022, Rollic also includes Popcore, further strengthening its leading position among worldwide hyper-casual publishers in terms of downloads and revenue.
Burak Vardal, co-founder and CEO of Rollic, said in a statement, “When we put Popcore’s success in game production side by side with the values that Rollic adheres to, the coming together of the two companies creates an excellent synergy in terms of user experiences in the future of mobile games. We are very happy to see Popcore among us. With Popcore joining our family, we will be able to create long-lasting interaction options for our players using the technology and designs developed by our teams. Our total player pool that will be formed with this merger will represent the most valuable player base in the game world, where newcomers to the game world and long-time gamers are blended.”
“Our teams rigorously test our games and develop our games based on deep data analytics to provide entertainment that balances the accessibility of the Hyper-casual genre with the consistent interplay of Casual games,” said Popcore Co-Founder Johannes Heinze. “Through this agreement, our branded ad-based, free-to-play mobile games will combine with Rollic’s global marketing expertise and Zynga’s in-game development history to create the next generation of mobile games.”
Founded by brothers Thomas Heinze and Johannes Heinze, Popcore develops innovative, ad-driven, free-to-play games that have been downloaded over 500 million times across iOS and Android by users worldwide. Using unique data testing methods that make it easy to experiment with minimal risk, the team develops games with a deep understanding of user sentiment and behavior that have both mass appeal and long-term engagement. Headquartered in Berlin, more than 150 members of the Popcore team work to develop, test and scale their games across Europe.
Istanbul-based Rollic has recently surpassed a total of 2 billion downloads worldwide, and so far 19 games have reached the 1st or 2nd place in the US Apple App Store. The company develops and publishes popular mobile games in over 175 countries, redefining the fast-growing Hyper-casual industry by adding in-game updates and events to many of the top-performing games. Thanks to these developments, Rollic is reinventing interaction patterns by taking the lifecycle of Hyper-casual games beyond the traditional window of the genre.
Founded in 2018, Popcore is a Berlin-based game developer focused on ad-based free-to-play games for iOS and Android. Popcore has been listed by wired.com among the 10 hottest startups in Berlin and the top 100 startups in Europe and has developed and published chart-topping games such as Parking Jam, Pull the Pin, Scavenger Hunt, and Tap Away, with more than 500 million downloads on iOS and Android. Popcore is committed to creating games that have both mass appeal and long-term engagement, while building an ecosystem that transforms talent into creators and provides the tools and support to perfect them.
Source: Egirisim / Translated by Irem Yildiz