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GREE buys Crime City developer Funzio for $210 million

GREE last year made headlines when they bought out OpenFeint for a cool $104 million. This year GREE has decided to make headlines again with another acquisition but this time snapping up Android game developer Funzio, creators of Crime City, for almost double what they paid for OpenFeint.

For those of you not familiar with Crime City, it is a MMO crime game similar to the likes of Mafia Wars and other titles but instead of being menu driven, it is completely graphical like an actual game. Crime City has been a Top 10 game on the Google Play store since its release and it seems between that and their other games doing well on iOS, it was enough for GREE to contact them and flog them with a ridiculous amount of money.

So now the crew over at Funzio is a whole lot richer after yesterday’s announcement of the GREE acquisition. For all the details you can check out the official press release below.

Developer Website: Funzio

GREE ACQUIRES LEADING MOBILE DEVELOPER FUNZIO

Continues to Grow Core Gaming Expertise

San Francisco, CA – May 1, 2012 – GREE, a leader in the mobile social gaming industry, today announced the acquisition of Funzio, Inc., a trailblazer in developing mid-core mobile game titles. The acquisition will strengthen GREE’s ability to bring high-quality games to the mobile social games market. Funzio’s titles will also join the roster of cutting-edge content planned for GREE’s global platform.

“The team at Funzio is creating some of the best mobile games in the world today. This acquisition allows us to join their talent and expertise with our vision for a mobile social gaming ecosystem.” said Naoki Aoyagi, Chief Executive Officer of GREE International. “We are extremely excited to expand our mid-core portfolio and continue to show how the mobile games market is the inevitable next step for gamers worldwide.”

Funzio – creator of successful titles “Crime City,” “Modern War,” and “Kingdom Age” – boasts over 20 million game downloads and possesses a strong, passionate fan base. The company’s officers and founders, a team of talented industry veterans, will join GREE to grow GREE’s San Francisco development studio. Ken Chiu (CEO) and Anil Dharni (COO) will join GREE International as Senior Vice Presidents while Ram Gudavalli (CTO) and Andy Keidel (VP, Engineering) will join as Vice Presidents.

GREE shares our vision of a mobile world where people can play together wherever and whenever they are,” said Ken Chiu, CEO and Founder of Funzio. “We feel strongly that our experience in creating unique games for the mid-core market and GREE’s expertise in bringing the mobile games to the worldwide community is a perfect match.”

GREE strives to build the world’s best and largest mobile social games ecosystem. GREE’s acquisition of Funzio will move GREE toward its goal of attaining one billion worldwide users while introducing new genre expertise and exceptional titles to the anticipated GREE social mobile gaming platform, scheduled for release in Q2 2012. The new GREE platform will feature high-quality content, bring gamers a robust social gaming experience, and offer developers access to a growing, engaged global audience.

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