Private equity firm CVC reportedly spends £900m on veteran MMO developers
Jagex, the British developers of veteran fantasyMMORuneScape, have announced their acquisition by a potentially surprising new owner: the private equity firm best-known for owning major sports brands including Six Nations Rugby, Spanish football league LaLiga, French football governing body Ligue de Football and the Women’s Tennis Association. The deal was reportedly closed for almost a billion pounds.
Although Jagex have developed and published a number of other games over the years, from a RuneScape card game spin-off to RTS games and looter-shooters, none have recreated the success of their flagship MMO. According to Jagex, RuneScape has made over $1.5 billion during its lifetime, bolstered by record numbers of subscribers last year.
While Jagex, CVC and Haveli didn’t disclose the specifics of the deal,Sky Newshad recently reported that the studio’s price tag had been set at £900 million.
Naturally, the companies’statementsregarding the deal painted it as a great move for everyone involved, with Jagex CEO Phil Mansell saying that the acquisition would “will help Jagex build on our portfolio of forever games, furthering our aims of supporting and growing our community of forever fans. Together we’ll create more of the experiences our fans love, innovate to empower our players further, and build new forever games that capture imaginations.”
Still, with 700 people employed by the studio across the world and thecurrent state of thingsin the games industry - not in small part due tootheracquisitionsby multibillion conglomerates - it’s hard not to feel at least some trepidation about yet another enormous sale taking place.
