Walt Disney has entered the world of social games after it bought Playdom, a popular social game developer, for a sum of $763.2m. This deal is worth $563.2m in “total consideration”, plus $200m in performance-linked earn-out.
Disney stated in a release that its purchase of Playdom “will strengthen its already-robust digital gaming portfolio, acquire a first-rate management team and provide consumers new ways to interact with the company on popular social networks like Facebook and MySpace”. Disney also hinted that it will introduce the company’s “characters, stories and brands” to social network games.
With its acquisition of Playdom, Disney will have ownership over famous social games like Mobsters. Last year, Playdom has quickly increased its lineup of games by acquiring eight gaming startups. Playdom is now MySpace’s top and Facebook’s fourth largest social game developer. The profitable company said in the previous year that sales totaled $50m.
The acquisition spells out a huge return for investors of Playdom, who contributed a total of $73m since November last year. It also indicates how fast social game startup valuations are rising. Another major acquisition in social networking happened last fall, after Electronic Arts bought Playfish earnouts in a cash deal amounting to $275m.
Playfish has 60 million active users per month, while Playdom only has 38 million active users per month.
