Germany-based game tech company Exit Games, the developer of the Photon multiplayer engine, has bought back the ~10.5% stake held by Firy (NYSE: FIRY), formerly Skillz, for $55m in cash. The sale closed on Oct 2, 2026. Skillz invested $50m in Jul’21 to use Photon in its mobile tournaments. With the sale, the two companies also ended the Photon licenses Skillz signed that year, and Firy is using the proceeds to redeem the rest of its 10.25% secured notes on Oct 15.
Photon sells networking software that keeps every player in an online match in sync, plus a hosted cloud that carries the traffic, and charges developers by peak concurrent users. It counts more than 1.4 billion monthly players and 1 million developers, with PC and mobile games including the party royale Stumble Guys, which Photon says it prototyped on its own engine before building it with Kitka Games, the PC ghost-hunting horror game Phasmophobia, and the co-op climbing game PEAK.
The business is profitable. In 2023, the latest year with consolidated group accounts, it made net profit of $39.6m (EUR 36.6m) on revenue of $67.5m (EUR 62.5m), down from $97.7m (EUR 92.8m) in 2022. At the price per share Firy received, the whole company would be worth ~13x its 2023 profit. In 2024, the latest year filed, the parent company alone reported net profit of $24.1m (EUR 22.3m) on revenue of $34.1m (EUR 31.5m). Exit Games was founded in 2003, and co-founder Christof Wegmann remains a managing director. Before Skillz, its outside backers included Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments, Neuhaus Partners and smac partners, which invested $4.6m (EUR 3.5m) in 2007.
