Playrix, a global Russian-founded mobile gaming giant, acquired a minority stake in AppQuantum, a Cyprus-based, Russian founded mobile gaming developer and publisher. The deal took place in late 2021 but was announced only in early February.
Launched in 2017 by Evgeny Maurus, AppQuantum is behind such titles as Dragon Champions, Evil Clicker and Gold & Goblins.
While claiming “dominant positions” in clicker and idle games, AppQuantum expects to “achieve similar results in other game genres” and “reach its full potential” thanks to its partnership with Playrix.
AppQuantum and its new shareholder will “exchange knowledge” in marketing, analytics, and production — but AppQuantum will “retain complete independence.”
An investment from Playrix in early December already brought impressive results: “The company showed tremendous growth in just a month for a game that had been actively marketed for six months, since June 2021. According to Sensor Tower, from November to December 2021, revenue grew 92.5% – from $1.8 million to $3.5 million, not including the main advertising monetisation,” said Maurus.
AppQuantum’s plans for 2022 include “investment in promising studios with talented developers interested in taking their business to the next level.”
Investment deals across Eastern Europe
Playrix co-founder Dmitry Bukhman sees in AppQuantum “one of the strongest mobile game publishers in the world with unique expertise in hybrid games” (games with a combination of in-app and advertising monetisation).
Focusing on free-to-play mobile games, Playrix is a major global gaming player. Now headquartered in Dublin, the company was born in Vologda, Russia, 17 years ago. The company is among the world’s three top game publishers by generated revenues.
In recent years Playrix made investments in Vizor, a major Belarusian publisher of multiplayer games for browser, social networks, and mobile platforms; in Ukrainian studios Zagrava Games and Boolat Games; in Armenian Plexonic; in Croatian and Serbian companies; as well as in Nexters, a Russian-founded gaming company which was listed on the Nasdaq last year via a SPAC merger.
Playrix created such hit games such as Gardenscapes, Fishdom, Homescapes, Manor Matters, Township and Wildscapes, with “more than 100 million people playing the company’s games every month.”
The company’s revenue in 2020 exceeded $1.7 billion, according to Sensor Tower.
