Confirmed: EA Acquires KlickNation, Source Says Price is Roughly $35M
Electronic Arts said it acquired KlickNation to beef up its RPG games on social networks after we broke the news about the deal yesterday. The Sacramento, Calif.-based company will become part of BioWare’s social gaming team.
EA says the studio will focus on role-playing games for social networks and will be led by KlickNation’s chief executive Mark Otero. The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, but a source tells us that the total price was roughly $35 million, including earnouts and retention bonuses. KlickNation’s games also probably won’t be sunsetted even though they have seen a slight slip in active usage over the past month.
In acquiring KlickNation, EA enters the emerging core gamer market on Facebook, which is currently dominated by strategy combat games like Kixeye’s Backyard Monsters and IGG’s Galaxy Online 2. CrowdStar and RockYou recently joined this market with their own strategy combat titles released in the last three months.
KlickNation is a relatively small developer compared to other studios producing core strategy games. According to our AppData traffic tracking service, the developer at one point enjoyed 1.3 million monthly active users, and saw around 150,000 daily active users at its peak. Today, the developer sees 395,441 monthly active users and 49,022 daily active users.
ETA: Although we’re reasonably certain that EA is working on a companion social game for BioWare property Mass Effect 3, we don’t believe that KlickNation is working on that project. Given the console game’s March 2012 release window, it would be a very tight development cycle for a fully realized companion social game. BioWare also has a back catalog of IP to pull from (Baldur’s Gate, Jade Empire, etc.) to develop all-new social games.
AJ Glasser contributed to this story.
December 2nd, 2011 at 9:53 am
[...] The newly dubbed studio will join with existing studio BioWare San Francisco (formerly known as EA2D) to form a new BioWare Social business unit, the company announced today, with Klicknation CEO and co-founder Mark Otero at the helm. EA didn’t disclose the price, but one publication put it at $35 million. [...]
December 2nd, 2011 at 12:39 pm
[...] Electronic Arts has bought social game developer KlickNation, and is turning it into a studio within BioWare, its role-playing developer division. The move is a relatively inexpensive way for EA to build up Facebook versions of its hits like Mass Effect and titles for hardcore gamers using its extensive IP line. The acquisition cost it $35 million, a source tells Inside Social Games. [...]
December 2nd, 2011 at 1:47 pm
[...] app games and the team will continue to be led by CEO Mark Otero. According to sources with InsideSocialGames, EA bought the company for roughly $35 million including earn-outs and retention bonuses. It is [...]
December 4th, 2011 at 11:41 am
[...] Confirmed: EA Acquires KlickNation, Source Says Price is Roughly $35M [...]
March 9th, 2012 at 10:23 am
[...] managing director at Lightspeed Venture Partners and Mark Otero, who was CEO of KlickNation, a core gamer-focused company that Electronic Arts bought for the Bioware label spoke about how these deals are [...]
January 30th, 2013 at 1:45 pm
[...] from industry insiders, who recently told us EA has moved BioWare Social’s Sacramento office (formerly KlickNation) away from all social projects to work on mobile titles instead. This quarter, EA’s earnings [...]