Brainium Studios, the Portland-based smartphone app developer, has been sold in a $70 million cash transaction to free-to-play mobile game maker Playstudios, Inc. (Nasdaq: MYPS).
"Contingent consideration" in the deal will be linked to Brainium's performance from the deal's closing to Dec. 31, Playstudios said on Thursday.
The local game studio, headquartered in the Pearl District's popular Tanner Point building, was founded by Farhad Shakiba and Jake Brownson, who attended the Oregon Institute of Technology together in the 2000s. They launched the company in 2009 and have since put out their company's spin on games such as Blackjack and Sudoku. Shakiba has described Brainium as the "element for creativity."
In 2021, the studio was 29-people strong and had ambitious plans for more hiring.
"Playstudios is the perfect home for Brainium as we enter this next phase of growth," Brainium Chief Operating Officer Scott Willoughby said in a statement on Thursday. "We look forward to joining their talented team, leveraging their vast strategic resources, and offering the unique playAWARDS platform to Brainum's loyal player base."
Playstudios' chief executive cast the purchase as a way to boost advertising revenue.
"The acquisition of Brainium brings a suite of thoughtfully designed and highly engaging casual games to Playstudios. It also further diversifies our business by complementing our largely in-app-purchase (IAP) based revenue model with a meaningful amount of advertising revenue,” the CEO, Andrew Pascal, said in a statement.
"We look forward to welcoming the Brainium team and working together to fully leverage our combined strengths in order to put real-world rewards in the hands of significantly more players," he said.
