As hard as it is to sometimes believe, not every major acquisition in social games is being done from San Francisco. Seattle’s PopCap Games, a casual and social game developer and publisher, has announced it’s acquired ZipZapPlay, a San Francisco-based and venture capital-funded Facebook game developer. ZipZapPlay has previously developed Baking Life among other social gaming titles.
PopCap is no stranger to Facebook, with its games Bejeweled Blitz and Zuma Blitz attracting 5 million daily users. With this move, plus the revelation it will be rolling out four to five games for Facebook before the end of 2011, makes it clear they are aggressively positioning themselves in social games.
“Adding ZipZapPlay’s strong design and development team to our rapidly growing social games group is a big move for us,” said Jason Kapalka, co-founder and chief creative officer at PopCap. “ZipZapPlay is a great cultural fit: a truly creative company that lives and breathes in this space. And their next game is very innovative and exciting — we believe it has the potential to be a step forward in the evolution of social gaming.”
ZipZapPlay’s offices and 17 employees will not be closed or moved , remaining in San Francisco. ZipZapPlay’s founders, CEO Curt Bererton and CCO Mathilde Pignol, will manage game design and development from their current offices. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
[Source: Seattle Times]
