Gaming is a constantly changing industry, with companies merging all over the place to create new super-companies. The news of Microsoft acquiring Activision Blizzard doesn’t come as any great surprise in the context of the gaming world. In fact, it’s just the latest in a long line of impressive mergers. We’ve looked at some of the biggest mergers that have ever taken place in gaming.
Playtech acquires YoYo Games
This might not be one of the biggest mergers in terms of money, but it was huge in terms of importance. This is for two main reasons. Firstly, it was one of the first mergers that saw one of the bigger names in the casino world acquire someone from outside of casino gaming. YoYo Games was known for creating GameMaker, the drag and drop game engine. By acquiring this, it allowed Playtech to make its game creation process much simpler and therefore speed up the titles it released. It also led to the company creating a lot of different gamification and casino offers such as first deposit bonuses as part of its titles.
This changed in 2021 when YoYo Games was sold to Opera as part of Opera’s plans to move into mobile gaming. Although YoYo are no longer part of Playtech, having access to the GameMaker software is something that’s still an influence in Playtech games to this day.
Take Two acquires Zynga
The most surprising thing about mergers is that it doesn’t stay in the exact same area of the industry. This was the case when Take Two acquired Zynga. Up until the recent Activision Blizzard acquisition, this was the biggest deal in gaming history. It saw Take Two, the company who own Rockstar (the creators of GTA), take over Zynga. This is an example of a big player in the console and PC gaming world acquiring a mobile game developer.
It’s a big example of video gaming moving more and more to the mobile sector. It’s actually the largest sector at the moment in terms of number of players and has even led to Netflix deciding to make a move into mobile gaming. It’s likely that this move will lead to big things in the mobile gaming world in the future, with many speculating that it could even be the advent of an official GTA mobile game coming along in the future.
Facebook acquires Oculus
This is one that has a lot of potential. With Facebook recently moving into being Meta and creating the Metaverse, Oculus could have a big part to play in this. As Virtual Reality will allow the opportunity to connect in a more immersive manner to the Metaverse, it will give Facebook the opportunity to provide a complete package to consumers.
Although Oculus was originally created for gaming, after being acquired by Facebook, it looks like it will be used for something more aimed at everyday life. This is something that we could see come to play more in the future.