Victoria’s Kixeye Studios has acquired the popular mobile turn-based strategy game Rise of Firstborn developed and published by Netmarble Corporation.
Rise of Firstborn, which was released globally in May 2018 as Iron Throne: The Firstborn, is a mobile strategy game that combines hero role-playing-game (RPG) elements with real-time player-versus-player (PVP).
In September 2021, the game had approximately 100,000 monthly active users and had generated total bookings of approximately USD $12 million during the last twelve months.
“We are incredibly excited to acquire Rise of Firstborn and welcome the Rise of Firstborn players into the Kixeye family”, CEO Colin How, who took over Kixeye in October this year.
“With this acquisition we are continuing to realize our vision to be the world leader in real-time strategy games. At the core of this game is a state-of-the-art game engine which we could potentially use for things like engine sharing and further scaling within the Stillfront Group of studios”.
Kixeye Studios was acquired by Stockholm-headquartered Stillfront Group in 2019 for USD $90 million.
“With this transaction, Stillfront continues its journey of asset acquisitions which continues to be a valuable segment in our M&A growth strategy. Rise of the Firstborn is an exceptionally strong real time strategy game and we are excited to leverage Kixeye’s experience with similar titles to make this game even more successful.”, says Tim Holland, CFO for Stillfront Group North America.
Following the acquisition, the game will be operated by Stillfront’s studio Kixeye, which will be able to leverage its existing development and live operations resources to further develop the game.
Kixeye has extensive experience from successfully operating and growing mobile strategy games, including its blockbuster title War Commander: Rogue Assault.
Leave a Reply