Stillfront acquired mobile game Crush Them All and the developer behind it
? Acquisition
- On June 7, 2021 Stockholm-based mobile game developer and publisher Stillfront Group acquired mobile idle RPG Crush Them All, developed by US-based mobile games developer Godzi Lab.
- In fact, Stillfront has acquired the whole Godzi Lab studio (the acquisition is structured as an all-cash acquisition of all shares in Godzi Lab Inc.), since all its assets and liabilities relate solely to the game.
- The deal is already closed with an undisclosed consideration paid fully in cash.
? Financial performance
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From now on, Crush Them All will be operated by Stillfront’s subsidiary Imperia Online, which allocated more resources to the game and is expected to scale current live-ops and UA capabilities. This is by the way the same studio that previously overtook all the operations of Siege: World War II from Simutronics, and successfully integrated several other existing products into Stillfront’s ecosystem.
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This would be the third (and probably the smallest) acquisition the company has announced this year: earlier, the company had acquired Moonfrog Labs ($90m), and Game Labs ($9.75m upfront). It also closed the acquisition of Super Free Games ($79m upfront), which was announced at the end of 2020.
? What’s Behind The Deal?
- Crush Them All was released in 2017 on iOS/Android, and since then has been downloaded more than 7.7m times (according to AppMagic).
- The peak of the downloads came in Dec’19, when the game saw 281k downloads. According to the press release, the game currently has 250k MAU with almost $13m bookings for the last 12 months.
- Other games developed by Godzi Lab, however, have not been received as well as Crush Them All, and currently generate less than 10k downloads a month combined.
- Quite obviously, with this deal, Stillfront continues to implement its active inorganic M&A growth strategy. After 2 major deals in Q1&2, the acquisition of a small Godzi Lab doesn’t look strange — the company is increasing its presence on the mobile market, adding another long-life cycle title in its pipeline.
- With Stillfront’s current audience and experience in expanding games, Crush Them All could become a more profitable and popular product. Furthermore, for Stillfront it’s also a win-win situation, as the company added a live product with a big space for growth. Last year, Stillfront announced 6 acquisitions; this year, we have already seen three — and have every reason to expect more M&As from the Swedish company.
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