Animoca Brands Corporation Ltd (ASX:AB1) continues to grow its mobile games business and is acquiring Finland-based Tribeflame Oy and its subsidiary Benji Bananas Oy.
Tribeflame is one of the world’s first tablet games companies, founded in 2009 in Finland by Torulf Jernström and Marcus Alanen, who will be joining Animoca Brands.
The Finnish company has launched more than a dozen games, including the franchise Benji Bananas, which has been downloaded more than 107 million times.
READ: Animoca Brands one of the ASX top performers in 2018
Three of the Tribeflame’s games have topped charts on Google Play™ and the App Store®.
Animoca shares were up almost 25% to $0.077 in early trade.
MasterChef game application
The acquisition follows Animoca Brands last week entering an agreement with two other companies to co-develop a mobile game application based on the MasterChef TV franchise.
iCandy Interactive Limited (ASX:ICI) and Nitro Interactive Ltd will also co-invest with Animoca in the MasterChef global iOS and Android mobile game application.
Full ownership of Tribeflame games
The Tribeflame acquisition gives Animoca full ownership of all Tribeflame and
Benji Bananas mobile applications and games.
These include Racecar, Tropical Resort, Benji Bananas, Benji Bananas Adventures, Waypoint Warriors, and many others.
Benji Bananas, which was originally published by FingerSoft, has earned an estimated €2.25 million in gross revenues since its launch in 2013.
Second Finnish acquisition
It is the second Finnish game company acquired by Animoca, following the purchase of TicBits Oy in July 2016.
Tribeflame, also based in Turku, Finland, will co-locate with TicBits with the aim to enhance the company’s development capability in Finland.
The acquisition is expected to accelerate development of Anomica’s Android™ version of Crazy Defense Heroes, its latest tower defense and collectible card mobile title.
More than A$467,000 in revenue was generated by the title in its first two weeks of limited release on the App Store in select Asian territories.
CryptoKitties agreement
The company also recently signed an exclusive licence and distribution agreement with Axiom Zen to publish CryptoKitties in China.
CryptoKitties is the first major video game based on blockchain, the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like BitCoin and Ethereum.