YoYo Games, creators of the popular GameMaker game engine, have just been sold to Opera. Opera is best known for their web browser of the same name. YoYo games was previously owned by gambling company Playtech and according to this Gamasutra article, was just sold for $10M, a loss of $6.4M since their 2015 acquisition. Opera have made moves recently into the browser gaming space with the release of their Opera GX gaming web browser, currently available in early access.
Details of the purchase were just made public on the YoYo blog:
Looking forward, Opera has big plans for YoYo Games and GameMaker. Together with Opera GX, GameMaker will form the cornerstone of Opera Gaming – a new division focused on expanding Opera’s reach and capabilities within the gaming space.
“We are very excited to start working with the team at YoYo Games,” said Krystian Kolondra, EVP Browsers at Opera. “We see the platform as being an ideal acquisition to complement our global ambitions in gaming, along with our Opera GX gaming browser. We look forward to further growing Opera GX and to driving the growth of GameMaker, making it more accessible to novice users and developing it into the world’s leading 2D game engine used by commercial studios. We are also thrilled to find future synergies between YoYo Games’ products and Opera GX.”
Stuart Poole, General Manager of YoYo Games said, “It’s been clear to us from the first time we spoke to them that the whole of the team at Opera is incredibly passionate about games. Since joining them last week, the positivity and creative energy we are seeing from them has been overwhelming. We have always had big plans for improving GameMaker across all platforms, both from the perspective of improving accessibility and further developing the features available to commercial studios; and now we can’t wait to see them arrive much sooner.”
In a world where the open source Godot game engine is gaining steam, and the two major players, Unity and Unreal both have free versions available, selling a commercial game engine is a more and more challenging proposition. Having a parent company like Opera could be a very good choice for the future success of GameMaker as a viable engine. If you are interested in learning more about GameMaker Studio 2, closer look feature. You can learn more about the GameMaker Opera deal in the video below.