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Eight years after it acquired the mobile developer for almost $500 million (£382m), Nexon has sold Gloops for a single Japanese Yen.
As reported by PocketGamer.biz, a deal to sell Gloops to Japanese firm GR Drive for ¥1 (£0.006) went through on Christmas Eve, December 24th, 2019.
“In October 2012, Nexon turned Gloops, Inc., which was one of the leading mobile social game developers at the time, into its consolidated subsidiary for the purpose of accelerating its mobile game business strategy,” the company said. “However, due to the rapidly changing mobile social game environment, keeping up with such changes in game development and operations has continued to be more difficult than initially expected.
“Therefore, we expect that the situation where we allocate much management resources to earn stable revenue would continue going forward.”
The Asian mobile giant Nexon swooped in to buy Japanese mobile developer Gloops for $467m back in 2012. Based in Tokyo, Gloops had developed a number of titles for DeNa’s Mobage platform in Japan such as social card battle game Japan Pro Baseball Card Battle, Warriors of Odin, and Three Kingdoms Guild Battle.
As well as developing titles for the Japan market, Gloops also signed a deal with DeNa to develop ten titles for Mobage targeted at North America and Europe, as well as one game each for China and South Korea.
“This acquisition significantly accelerates Nexon’s mobile strategy, giving us immediate exposure to Japan’s large and fast growing mobile market,” said Nexon CEO Seungwoo Choi at the time. “Gloops has established itself as one of the premier mobile game developers in the world and a key player in one of our most important growth areas, with a robust portfolio of hit titles and a strong track record of driving market innovation. We look forward to leveraging Gloops’ outstanding capabilities and scale to expand the Nexon game experience to users on mobile platforms worldwide.”
