Outplay Eyes Acquisitions as Profits Rise

Outplay may on the hunt for new acquisitions, according to a new report in The Courier.

The paper notes that the studio’s latest account show an increase in pre-tax profits of £8.9 million, an increase of £7.6m from the previous year.

This is despite a drop in turnover of 46%, caused by the studios £12m sale of Eight Pixels Square to Miniclip in 2020.

Future Acquisitions?

According to The Courier, the studio is now looking at the acquisition of one or more studios. Doug Hare, the CEO of Outplay is quoted as saying:

“I don’t think we’ll close transaction this year, but it’s being worked on right now.

We’ll work on continuing to grow the business from a revenue perspective.

Last year was a step back from the year before at a group level.”

Doug also revealed that the studio is already working on its next title, for release in 2021:

“We’ll be looking to grow over the course of the coming months and years, and beyond that we’re looking at new game development for next year.”

Outplay On The Up

Outplay Entertainment is already the largest independent mobile developer in the UK. The studio launched three games in 2020 – Craft Candy Blast, Mystery Match Village and Gordon Ramsay’s Chef Blast. In the same period, Outplay added 30 new developers to the team, bringing the headcount to 127.

Doug told the Courier:

“The game industry is one of the fortunate industries that has thrived and grown as a result of the pandemic, with people looking for ways of entertaining themselves.

We really do recognise that there’s quite a few types of entertainment, like film or television, where the appetite is still there, but it’s a lot harder to release movies and series in lockdown. Whereas for us, we’ve launched multiple games and concluded a deal with Miniclip. We just can’t believe how fortunate we are.

We believe we can grow Gordon Ramsay’s Chef Blast into being our biggest success yet.

We plan to continue to add new features to the game, promote the game and see the growth.

This year is about continuing to grow the business.”