Voodoo has been criticised for releasing apparent clones of indie games. As of August 2021, the platform has 1 million MAUs in the United States. Outside of games, Voodoo developed the social media platform Wizz in 2020. The company finances select studios and supports them during the prototyping phase, receiving a royalty share in return. The publisher has worked with over 2,000 such studios, which account for 75% of Voodoo's releases. Įxternal developers can submit games through an online platform for Voodoo to evaluate. Helix Jump, developed by H8games, is Voodoo's most successful game with more than 500 million downloads as of August 2020. In December 2019, Voodoo games had 2.6 billion downloads, 300 million monthly active users (MAUs), and 1 billion individual players. Voodoo games were downloaded 2 billion times by April 2019, 3.7 billion downloads by May 2020, and 5 billion by May 2021. Games released by the company include Helix Jump, Baseball Boy, Snake vs Block, Hole.io, Aquapark.io, Purple Diver, Crowd City, and Paper.io. The majority of Voodoo's games are free-to-play " hyper-casual games" developed for the Android and iOS mobile operating systems. Voodoo acquired the Israeli studio Beach Bum in September for a reported price of $250–300 million. Groupe Bruxelles Lambert acquired a 16% stake in Voodoo for €266 million in August 2021, valuing Voodoo at €1.7 billion. Voodoo further bought BidShake, a Tel Aviv company developing a marketing automation platform, in June 2021. OHM Games had developed four games for Voodoo in 2020, which together generated 260 million downloads. The company announced an investment in Istanbul-based developer Fabrika Games in September 2020, and acquired Parisian developer OHM Games in December. In total in 2020, Voodoo saw revenues of €380 million, up from €1 million in 2016. Voodoo subsequently opened offices in Singapore and Japan later that month, headed by Julian Corbett and Ben Fox, respectively. According to Yazdi, this deal would help Voodoo to extend their games into the Asia-Pacific market. At this time, Voodoo was valued at $1.4 billion. Tencent acquired a minority stake to undisclosed terms in August that year. īy July 2020, Tencent was looking to acquire a minority stake in Voodoo, which was still majority-owned by Yazdi and Ritter. The company acquired Shoreditch-based developer Gumbug in December that year. Through this new location, Voodoo intended to expand beyond hyper-casual games. This continued with the opening of a Montreal development studio in November 2019, led by Mehdi El Moussali, a former producer for Gameloft. A publishing office in Istanbul, Turkey, was announced in August 2019 and is headed by publishing director Corentin Selz. īy September 2019, Voodoo employed 220 people, including 150 at its Paris headquarters. It later hired key employees from developers Blizzard Entertainment, King, and Mamau. The studio started out with roughly ten people, looking to eventually expand to 40 employees. A development studio in Berlin, Germany, was established in December 2018, headed by general manager Alexander Willink. At the time, Voodoo had, aside from its Paris headquarters, offices in Montpellier and Strasbourg. Yazdi and Ritter retained control of the company. It was the largest fundraising in the French technology sector since 2015. In May 2018, the American banking company Goldman Sachs, through its West Street Capital Partners VII fund, invested US$200 million in Voodoo. Through 2017, Voodoo quadrupled its staff count to 80 and expected to grow to 150 people by the end of 2018. This method resulted in the successful release of Paper.io in 2016. Using the Unity game engine, Voodoo tested one new game roughly every week. Using data it gathered from its previous games, the company designed its newer games to attract more players. According to Rivaud, the company was in turmoil for its first four years in operation and opted to change its business strategy thereafter. Yazdi became the chief executive officer of Voodoo, while Gabriel Rivaud acted as the vice-president of games. They had been friends since high school and had previously founded Studio Cadet in 2012, a services company for websites and mobile applications. Voodoo was founded in 2013 by Alexandre Yazdi and Laurent Ritter. The company has been criticised for cloning other games. By February 2022, their apps surpassed 6 billion installs. Voodoo's games, predominantly free-to-play " hyper-casual games", have been collectively downloaded 5 billion times as of May 2021. The company was founded in 2013 by Alexandre Yazdi and Laurent Ritter. Voodoo SAS (also referred to as Voodoo.io) is a French video game developer and publisher based in Paris.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |