Spil Games

Spil Games
Industry Video game development
mobile games
interactive entertainment
Headquarters Hilversum, Netherlands
Website www.spilgames.com

Spil Games publishes free-to-play games for iPhone, iPad and Android devices.[1] The company also publishes games for the web and Facebook.[2] It is a privately owned company based in Hilversum near Amsterdam in the Netherlands and has more than 150 employees.

History

Spill Group was formed by two Dutch entrepreneurs in 2001. The first online games website was launched in 2004, in the Dutch market. At this time, the target audience was mostly teenager girls.

In 2007 Spill Group acquired a majority share in the Chinese game development company zLong and began producing games. In 2007, portals were also expanded to the US and UK.

The 2008 acquisition of the MMO (massive multiplayer online) site/community, onrpg.com, moved the company into the MMORPG segment.

In July 2008, Spill group changed the company name and rebranded to Spil Games.

In total, Spil Games expanded its segmented and localized approach with more than 50 websites where people can play games online in 20 languages.

In May 2014 the company announced that it will let go of a substantial portion of its work force – 90 out of 240 full time positions – as a result of a move from website to mobile and tablet games.[3]

In September 2014, the company reorganised, closing its Dutch development studio and concentrating on mobile game publishing.[4]

Turnaround

In February 2015, a new CEO was appointed. Tung Nguyen-Khac had been CEO of the gaming division of the German television company ProSiebenSat1. Venturebeat said of the move: "With the mobile-gaming industry growing to $25 billion in 2014, it's not surprising that a company like Spil would look for new leadership to help get a bigger piece of that action."[5] On 16, August, 2016 Spil Games announced it achieved 100 million downloads in the last 12 months. PocketGamer said of the announcement that Spil “had originally hoped to reach this milestone by the end of 2016, and has now revised its goal up to 150 million for the end of the year"[6]

New games

In the first part of 2016, the company announced and launched several game brands.

In February 2016, it purchased the rights to the classic game Creatures[7]

In April 2016, Atari founder Nolan Bushnell announced that he would be working with Spil to develop several new mobile games[8]

In May 2016, the company bought the Mousebreaker web gaming site[9]

Europacorp, Luc Besson’s film studio, selects Spil Games to create the official mobile game for Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, the director’s upcoming $180M sci-fi movie.[10]

On 17 November, 2016 Spil Games launches Cats Empire, a free to play mobile strategy game.[11]

Facebook chooses[12] Spil Games as a launch partner for Instant Games on 29 November. Spil's Endless Lake is one of 17 games to be featured in Instant Games where players can play games directly on Messenger or their Facebook News Feed.

Audience

Spil Games has more than 115 million monthly active users. In mobile, the company started from nowhere and reached 2.6m weekly installs by December 2015. Cumulative new installs exceeded 50 m in 2015.[13]

Games

Mobile Games

Spil’s top mobile games in the Apple App Store and Google Play include:

• The Trollface Quest series

• My Dolphin Show

• The Crash Drive series

• The Operate Now Series

Web Games

The company publishes thousands of web games through its web portals. These include:

• GamesGames.com

• Agame.com

• GirlsGoGames.com

• A10.com

• Mousebreaker.com

References

  1. ↑ "Home". Spil Games. Retrieved 2016-06-16.
  2. ↑ "Home". Spil Games. Retrieved 2016-06-16.
  3. ↑ "Spil Games rond reorganisatie af en sluit interne studio | Nieuws | Entertainment Business". www.entertainmentbusiness.nl. Retrieved 2016-06-16.
  4. ↑ "Nieuws week september 1 2014 (36) | Entertainment Business". www.entertainmentbusiness.nl. Retrieved 2016-06-16.
  5. ↑ "Spil Games gets new mobile-savvy CEO to oversee social-gaming transition from Facebook". VentureBeat. Retrieved 2016-06-16.
  6. ↑ Cowley, Ric (August 16, 2016). "PocketGamer.biz".
  7. ↑ "Spil Games announces Creature Family, a F2P reboot of the AI classic for 2017". pocketgamer.biz. Retrieved 2016-06-16.
  8. ↑ Levy, Ari (2016-04-28). "Atari founder Bushnell jumps into mobile with Spil Games". CNBC. Retrieved 2016-06-16.
  9. ↑ "Spil Games acquires male-oriented browser game portal Mousebreaker". pocketgamer.biz. Retrieved 2016-06-16.
  10. ↑ "'Valerian' Mobile and Web Games to Be Created by Spil Games". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 2016-10-14.
  11. ↑ "CATS EMPIRE Now Available for iOS and Android". Retrieved 2016-11-19.
  12. ↑ "King, Zynga, Konami and more launch 17 games on Facebook's Instant Games platform". pocketgamer.biz. Retrieved 2016-11-30.
  13. ↑ "MCV UK". MCV UK. Retrieved 2016-06-16.

Sources

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/30/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.