In Swedish gaming news, Techcrunch reports King.com has just acquired Swedish mobile gaming developer Fabrication Games. In recent years King.com has risen to become the fourth largest game developer on Facebook after Zynga, Wooga, and EA, but has yet to make a big push to mobile. Fabrication Games has been working in the mobile gaming industry for a long time — they won their first award in 2002 — and all signs point to a talent acquisition. The cost of the acquisition was not disclosed.
Fabrication Games recently developed Niko for the Finnish game publisher, Sulake. The Swedish company’s 12 employees will be joining King.com, as well as the company’s library of games and development tools.
Kim-Mai Cutler, the writer of the Techcrunch article, makes a point that King.com should be an interesting company to watch with Fabrication Games now underneath them, considering their late move into mobile. While King may be the 4th largest publisher on Facebook, they still haven’t made a dent in the mobile sector.
On top of that, Cutler also points out:
…We’re hearing that the company is looking at a potential initial public offering next year on the NASDAQ, depending on market conditions. Chief executive Riccardo Zacconi is hunting around the West Coast for a Silicon Valley-based board member and is changing internal financial reporting to meet generally accepted accounting principles.
King.com is also interesting because they offer more than the standard casual and social game publisher- they also offer cash tournaments for skill games where winners take home cash prizes. The company has grown to 140 employees with offices in the UK, Sweeden, and across europe, and has partnered with MSN, Yahoo, Zylom, and Spilgames.
