Zynga Acquires Rising Tide Games to Boost Social Casino Offering
Zynga has just agreed to a deal to acquire social gaming specialist Rising Tide Games in an attempt to boost its social casino offering.
Rising Tide Games was founded by former Zynga and Playtika executives and was founded with a focus on developing free to play social games such as its social slot ‘Black Diamond Casino’.
The terms of the deal are not being disclosed but Zynga has said that the acquisition will help strengthen its commitment to social casino, a strategy it begun by purchasing Spooky Cool Labs back in 2013. As a result the company already has a large social casino slots business and its social slots franchise bookings grew by 274% between the second quarter of 2014 and the second quarter of this year.
It is thought that the social casino game market will be worth about $3.5 billion worldwide this year and it is expected to grow by 15% to $4 billion next year.
Zynga has said that as a result of the new acquisition it expects to launch a number of new desktop and mobile slots titles later this year. The acquisition also shows that Mark Pincus, the Zynga founder who returned to replace CEO Don Mattrick last April, is open to bringing back Zynga executives who left under Mattrick’s tenure.
Speaking about the acquisition Pincus said that the company is excited to welcome the “deeply talented” Rising Tide Games. He went on to say that Zynga already has a long history in social casino games and pointed out that Zynga Poker remains the world’s largest free poker game.
