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CVC Capital Partners and Haveli Investments have acquired Jagex for an undisclosed sum.
Jagex has changed ownership four times within the last decade. Its most recent owner before CVC Capital Partners and Haveli Investments was The Carlyle Group, who acquired the company in 2021 from Macarthur Fortune Holding. Macarthur acquired the firm from Hongtou in 2020, and Hongtou acquired the company from Insight Venture Partners in 2016.
CVC Capital Partners and Haveli Investments are two of the biggest private equity firms in the world. CVC Capital Partners largely operates within the world of international sports, whereas Haveli (among other things) operates a gaming fund that has supported other developers like Omeda Studios and Behaviour Interactive in their creative efforts.
Jagex has a headquarters in Cambridge, but employs more than 700 people around the globe. It works on games for PC, mobile and consoles, and is most well known for the popular MMORPG RuneScape, which has been actively played by users since 2001, and has generated over £1.3 billion ($1.5 billion) in revenue. In 2022, Jagex acquired Pipeworks and Gamepires, helping the latter to launch the survival game SCUM into Steam Early Access and on to consoles later in 2024.
“I’m delighted to welcome CVC Capital Partners and Haveli Investments as strategic partners for Jagex,” said Phil Mansell, CEO at Jagex.
“CVC and Haveli will help Jagex build on our portfolio of forever games, furthering our aims of supporting and growing our community of forever fans. Together we’ll create more of the experiences our fans love, innovate to empower our players further, and build new forever games that capture imaginations.
“The support from Carlyle has been exceptional, and that success has positioned Jagex for the future. With the continued growth of our flagship RuneScape franchise, we’re crafting more adventures to delight our forever fans, and we’re excited about the future, as we create new experiences that play to our strengths of putting our communities at the heart of everything we do.”
