Zattikka, a London based social and casual games developer, has has gone public (on London’s AIM exchange), raising approximately £12.6 million, with proceeds to be used to fund the acquisition of three online games companies and ongoing working capital.
Zattikka was founded in 2009 and is publishing interactive games and entertainment products across internet connected platforms, through various media channels. These channels include PC web browsers, social networks, mobile devices, connected consoles, and other emerging platforms including IP TVs and set top boxes.
Contemporaneous with admission, Zattikka will complete the acquisitions of Hattrick Holdings, Sneaky Games, and Concept Art House. The acquisitions will provide Zattikka with products that can then be sold to end-customers in key European, US and Chinese markets.
The vision for the young company is to become a large scale, diverse games publisher with products operating across growth digital platforms, and with a targeted geographic emphasis in Europe, the US and China. Zattikka proposes to achieve this by developing the company through strategic acquisitions and accelerating on-going organic growth.
Mark Opzoomer (CEO, Zattikka), stated: “We are delighted to list on AIM to provide the capital base and incentivise the entrepreneurs joining our group. We begin with a strong group of companies with operations in key gaming centres in the USA, China and Europe, a mix of revenues across subscriptions, virtual goods and work for hire with an exceptional team of talent. We have a great opportunity before us to accelerate the growth of this initial group across multi-platforms to create a world class games entertainment group.”
The Directors of Zattikka believe that there is currently rapid growth and fragmentation of the interactive games entertainment market, which presents a compelling commercial opportunity. The focus of Zattikka will be to acquire, develop and launch freemium games across social networks and mobile platforms, focused on the mid-core and casual social players. These games will be launched and maintained as a service in the sense that they are live products that will be updated on a regular basis with new content, characters, levels and upgrades for players to purchase.
Following admission, Zattikka will adopt a buy and build strategy by seeking to acquire existing profitable, but under-exploited, IP game assets and businesses with proven skill sets in monetising social and mobile games. These will then be developed through the application of a focused publishing and development strategy, coupled with the Directors’ sector knowledge, to create a leading interactive games entertainment group. Future acquisitions are likely to be of varying size and located in Europe, the US and Asia. This may include making a future acquisition of scale and the company has identified certain potential targets which appear to meet this profile.
Zattikka has developed its own cloud based analytics and metrics platform, called “SNAP”, capable of reporting on any game, regardless of the platform, and which the company proposes to implement into each of the games developed by Zattikka. The purpose of this platform is to allow the product development team to analyse the success of each individual feature in the game after it has gone live, and to determine, from the user behaviour, which areas of the game need to be improved to enhance user engagement, retention, virality and monetisation.
The Acquisitions
-Hattrick is a private business, incorporated in Gibraltar with a development office in Malmö, Sweden. Hattrick was founded by Johan Gustafsson and Daniel Abrahamsson in 1997 and currently operates the eponymous Hattrick game and Popmundo.
-Concept Art House was originally founded in 2005 by James Zhang and Scott Chou and has offices in San Francisco and Shanghai. It’s a art and design company with an own proprietary art school which has worked on gaming projects including Command and Conquer, It Girl, Mafia Wars and World of Warcraft. This acquisition brings in an experienced team that has produced art and design for successful Facebook games, such as Nightclub City and Kingdoms of Camelot, and gives access to both Western and Eastern markets with a foothold in the Asian social and mobile gaming market.
-Sneaky Games was founded by David Godwin in Austin, Texas, in 2009. This acquisition combines social game development and direct marketing expertise with relationships in the gaming industry. Sneaky Games is the creator of social games like Fantasy Kingdoms, Vampire Legacy and Syfy Monster Island
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