Company Behind Angry Birds Acquired

Japanese game giant Sega has made a bid for Rovio, the Finnish company behind the Angry Birds games.

 

That writes The Wall Street Journal. Both companies have also issued a press release announcing the acquisition. The deal is worth 706 million euros. As part of the larger Sega Sammy Holdings, Sega is taking over all the Finnish company shares. The deal is expected to be completed by the end of this year.

Rovio, a game maker specializing in mobile games, has been open to a buyer for a while. The Finnish studio has had talks in recent years with the Israeli Playtika (which would have made an offer of $ 738 million) and with the Chinese Tencent (which would have offered three billion in 2017).

Rovio launched a strategic investigation in February to find a new potential buyer. So it would have found it with Sega.

Angry Birds is Rovio’s most famous franchise. The first game appeared in 2009 and experienced its most tremendous success in the early 2010s. In the meantime, there are several successors and spin-offs of the game. In addition, an animated film was released in 2016, The Angry Birds Movie, which due to success, also received a successor in 2019.

In February, Rovio removed the original game from the app store because the (free) game would get in the way of the newer versions.