GameForge Rockin the MMO Industry

Yesterday the German MMORPG publisher GameForge announced that they agreed to purchase 60% of Frogster Interactive in a deal that valued the company at around $80 million. That’s a lot of money. I’m not even sure if Frogster Interactive is profitable. It’s sort of hard to tell though because both GameForge and Frogster are private companies – meaning they don’t release their financial statements to the public.

Source: GameForge Buys Frogster

What I found interesting about this deal is that Frogster at the moment is a one trick pony. They have ONE game on the market – Runes of Magic, which is extremely popular. If the game fades away in the next 2 years GameForge will have gotten burnt on the deal. GameForge itself is a pretty large company and they can afford the risk. They’re big on browser games like Ogame, Ikariam and Gladiatus. They also publish a bunch of 3D MMORPGs like 4Story, Gates of Andaron, Metin 2 and Ace Online.

I’ve actually been playing Runes of Magic for the last few months and I absolutely love the game. I just hope with GameForge at the helm, Runes of Magic doesn’t go south. From what I’ve heard GameForge’s MMORPG Gates of Andaron is “pay to win”. I’d hate to see Runes of Magic become pay to win, as it would ruin the game for me. The most likely scenario will be that the two companies merge and Frogster ends up doing its own thing while GameForge ends up doing its own thing. Frogster will run independently as a subsidiary of GameForge.

Last I remember Frogster was supposed to be relaunching The Chronicles of Spellborn as a free to play game, but I think that project got axed recently. Sucks to see a game like TCOB disappear, but at least people will be able to enjoy it for a few more months on the Acclaim Games portal. I’m pretty sure Playdom, who bought acclaim games recently, will be shutting down many more games on the Acclaim portal. 2Moons, 9Dragons and Dance Online will likely all shut down in the coming months. Playdom already shut down RockFree – which was one of the most popular MMORPGs on the portal.

So what’s next for GameForge? Who knows. Maybe they’ll acquire another big MMO in the future.