Playdom Announces Acquisition of Acclaim Games Inc.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. and LOS ANGELES, May 18 /PRNewswire/ -- Playdom, a leading social gaming company, and Acclaim Games, a developer of social networking and downloadable casual games, announced today that Playdom has acquired Acclaim. Acclaim was privately held and is based in Los Angeles, California. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed.  

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Since its establishment in 2006 under one of the gaming industry's most recognizable brands, Acclaim has built a name for itself in the casual and MMORPG gaming space by developing and publishing free-to-play titles available on the Acclaim website (www.acclaim.com). With more than 15 million registered online users already playing Acclaim's games, the company launched RockFree, a Facebook guitar game, in March 2010, which now has tens of thousands of daily active users. Acclaim is currently hard at work on its latest Facebook game due to launch this summer.

"Joining forces with Playdom is a natural fit," said Howard Marks, CEO of Acclaim. "Both companies share the vision of connecting people globally through quality social games. Our deep expertise in building multi player online games and Playdom's vast player community will help us bring out the next generation of social games."

Acclaim will become the newest team to join Playdom's growing cadre of studios. Marks, a former Activision 2.0 co-founder and Chairman of the Activision Studios, will run the Acclaim studio for Playdom and serve in a senior strategic role for the parent company focused on Playdom's business development activities. Acclaim's Chief Technology Officer, Neil Malhotra, a longtime Marks colleague, will now act as the studio's senior technical officer.

"Bringing Howard and Neil into Playdom strengthens our leadership and bolsters our position as an innovative games developer for the future," said John Pleasants, CEO of Playdom. "Howard and Neil have worked together building and operating games for many years, and their pipeline of new games is strong.  We are also excited about opening our first Los Angeles based social game development studio which gives us access to all of the game development talent in Southern California.  We look forward to big things from this team."

About Playdom

Playdom is committed to bringing people everywhere together through the world's best social games. Playdom is a top game developer on Facebook and MySpace with popular titles including Social City, Sorority Life, Mobsters, Tiki Resort and our latest game, Treetopia. To date, more than 100 million Playdom games have been installed on leading platforms including Facebook, MySpace, iPhone and Hi5. Playdom is headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., with studios in San Francisco and Los Angeles, Calif.; Seattle, Wash.; Eugene, Ore.; Boulder, Colo.; Chapel Hill, N.C.; Buenos Aires, Argentina, and in South Asia. For more information about Playdom, please visit www.playdom.com.

SOURCE Playdom; Acclaim Games