Casual Game Companies Become Target for Purchases

It seems like purchasing flash game companies and social networking developers is all the rage nowadays. In the last two days, two major purchases have occurred involving these types of companies, adding to the list of massive purchases in the last couple years.

First, the most confusing purchase of the two.

Kongregate, a website dedicated to the hosting and integration of tens of thousands of flash games together into a unique OS of sorts. This includes in-game chatrooms and achievements for each title. With ten million visitors monthly, it was certainly worth the purchase from...

Gamestop. I am not being dyslexic here; the video game retailer will be purchasing Kongregate for an undisclosed amount. Kongregate co-founder and CEO Jim Greer explained more about the situation in the site's blog. Free games will continue to be released on Kongregate, but the company will be expanding itself. There is even a possibility that the PowerUp rewards program from Gamestop, which gives members special in-game rewards and special discounts, could be integrated into Kongregate.


The second purchase in two days seems to be more in line with the general industry trend of purchases.

Playdom is one of the leading developers for Facebook games, including, but not limited to, Sorority Life, Social City, and Mobsters, with roughly 42 million players monthly. It is one of the top developers to look out for in the casual space. So...

Disney bought the company. Playdom was acquired today by Disney for an astronomical $563.2 million. This is only the latest of massive purchases by Disney, who bought Marvel Comics for $4 billion in the last year. Disney certainly is not holding back on its reserves!

These two purchases come not too far from EA's purchase of Playfish, another Facebook powerhouse. Zynga, perhaps the largest Facebook developer that is still independent, will apparently be going public shortly. Either way, if a developer wants to get purchased for a lot of money, it should invest in Facebook or online social networking.

This could also be leading to a major dot-com crash 2.0, but only time can tell, in the end.

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