Shares in the company that owns the “Angry Birds” mobile game series shot up on Friday after it revealed that a rival developer “Playtika” had made a purchase offer of 683 million euros ($737.50 million), which encourages consolidation in the games sector.
In November 2022, Playtika made an initial bid to buy shares in Rovio, a Finnish company, for €8.50 and later increased it to €9.05 to make the purchase more enticing. The proposition has not yet gotten a response from the studio, according to Reuters.
Playtika CEO Robert Antokol said, “We firmly believe the combination of Rovio’s renowned IP and scale of its user base, together with our best-in-class monetization and game operations capabilities, will create tremendous value for our shareholders.”
Playtika is known for its mobile casino games, but it has recently added “Angry Birds”-casual style games to its library through a number of acquisitions.
In the early days of smartphones, “Angry Birds” became a ground-breaking mobile game introduced in 2009 by Rovio. According to Rovio, which claimed last year to have surpassed the milestone of 5 billion downloads throughout its games’ portfolio, the game was the first mobile game to receive 1 billion downloads.
The Finnish corporation stated that it was not currently in contact with Playtika but would review the idea and decide how to proceed. The early trade of Rovio’s shares saw a 40% increase to 7.96 euros before a modest decline.
The bid for Rovio is the most recent example of industry consolidation, including Sony Interactive Entertainment’s acquisition of Bungie Inc. for $3.6 billion and Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard for $69 billion.
Playtika’s acquisition offer of Rovio coincides with a post-pandemic slump in the gaming industry. According to industry data firm Newzoo, mobile game revenue would drop 6.4% from the previous year to $92.2 billion in 2022. According to Newzoo, mobile games generate half of all video game income, equal to the combined value of console, PC, and online games.