The expansion of MGI’s stake in gamigo is a positive step, as non-strategic shareholders will exit and gamigo can benefit from synergy potential with the other MGI companies. In particular, we see substantial synergy potential in customer acquisition for the gamigo games, in strengthening gamigo’s position in the mobile games sector and in the cooperation between the gamigo media companies and MGI’s media companies.
-Remco Westermann, CEO of Media and Games Invest plc in a press release
You know somebody is serious when they use the word “synergy” twice in a statement!
As reported over at Massively OP earlier this week, the primary shareholder in Gamigo, which operates a host of maintenance mode MMORPGs, including the Trion Worlds collection, which they acquired about a year and a half back.
Some of their pre-Trion collection
Back when they purchased the assets of Trion Worlds… the legal entity that was Trion itself imploded shortly thereafter… was the first time I took anything beyond a quick glace Gamigo, and it was difficult to figure out just what was going on. They ran a lot of games… and quite a few MMOs, though who knows what people mean when they use that acronym these days… with a relatively small staff.
I think Blizzard has that many people working just on WoW
As for who owned the place, digging around Bloomberg and other sites was perhaps less than fruitful. It was somewhere in a stack of companies, many of which were related to real estate investment.
Somewhere at the top of the tree
I suppose there isn’t much synergy between video games and real estate.
However, with the press release linked at the top, we now find that Media and Games Invest, plc (MGI), owned 53% of Gamigo and was moving in to acquire an additional 45% of the company, giving it a 98% lock on the whole thing. I suppose we can just forget about Suryoyo Holding GmbH at this point. Unless they are tied in to MGI somehow, they look to have cashed out.
MGI describes itself as an investment group and its other holdings include AppLift, which does mobile platform advertising, PubNative, which describes its business as “Advanced Mobile Monetization,” and ReachHero, which is into “Influencer Marketing.”
MGI itself is registered as a corporation in Malta according to Bloomberg, at an address that resolves to Papilio Services Limited, a company that specializes in getting companies Malta residency for tax purposes. There is probably nothing shady in that, save for a desire to pay less in taxes. If it had been Cyprus that would have been more of a red flag.
And MGI itself is 68% owned by Bodhivas GmbH. Bloomberg doesn’t have anything on that, but it appears to be owned by Remco Westermann of the quote at the top of this post, so he owns the company that owns most of the company which he runs and which just bought out most of Gamigo, a company that was mostly owned by that company already.
There is enough synergy in that to make your head swim.
All of which doesn’t go very far in answering the question of what happens to the MMOs of Gamigo? That is, after all, the general topic of this blog.
Given the focus on mobile, ads, and monetization as well as the use of the words “synergy” and “efficiencies” I would have to say nothing good. Then again, CEO Remco Westermann has been running Gamigo for a long stretch now (video of him at Gamescom 2013), so it isn’t like there is a new broom coming in to sweep away things. Maybe nothing will change on the MMO front.
As always, we shall see.
The Ancient Gaming Noob 