Online poker is the game of poker played over the Internet. It has been partly responsible for a huge increase in the number of poker players worldwide. Christiansen Capital Advisors stated online poker revenues grew from $82.7 million in 2001 to $2.4 billion in 2005, while a survey carried out by DrKW and Global Betting and Gaming Consultants asserted online poker revenues in 2004 were at $1.4 billion. In a testimony before the United States Senate regarding Internet Gaming, Grant Eve, a Certified Public Accountant representing the US Accounting Firm Joseph Eve, Certified Public Accountants, estimated that one in every four dollars gambled is gambled online.
Mafia is a 2002 action-adventure game developed by Illusion Softworks and published by Gathering of Developers. The game was released for Windows in August 2002, and later ported to the PlayStation 2 and Xbox in 2004. It is the first installment in the Mafia series. Set within the fictional city of Lost Heaven, Illinois, during the 1930s, the story follows the rise and fall of taxi driver-turned-mobster Tommy Angelo within the Salieri crime family.
Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings is a real-time strategy video game developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft. Released in 1999 for Microsoft Windows and Macintosh in 2001, it is the second game in the Age of Empires series. The Age of Kings is set in the Middle Ages and contains thirteen playable civilizations. Players aim to gather resources, which they use to build towns, create armies, and defeat their enemies. There are five historically based campaigns, which conscript the player to specialized and story-backed conditions, as well as three additional single-player game modes; multiplayer is also supported.
2K Czech, s.r.o. was a Czech video game developer based in Brno. Founded as Illusion Softworks in 1997 by Petr Vochozka and Jan Kudera. The company was acquired by Take-Two Interactive in January 2008 and subsequently organised under the 2K label, becoming 2K Czech. The studio was merged into 2K's Hangar 13 in 2017. The company is best known for creating the Mafia series.
Glu Mobile LLC is an American developer and publisher of mobile games. It was founded as Sorrent in 2001 and acquired Macrospace in 2004. Both companies collectively rebranded as Glu Mobile in 2005. In April 2021, the company was acquired by Electronic Arts.
888 Holdings plc, formerly Virtual Holdings Limited, is an international sports betting and gambling company. It owns brands such as 888casino, 888poker, 888sport, Mr Green, and William Hill. Business operations are led from its headquarters in Gibraltar, alongside satellite offices in Bucharest, Ceuta, Leeds, London, Malta, Sofia, and Tel Aviv. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange.
PokerStars is an online poker cardroom. It is the largest real money online poker site in the world, controlling over two-thirds of the total online poker market, and can be accessed through downloadable poker clients for Windows, macOS, Android and iOS.
There have been numerous Monopoly video games based on the core game mechanics of Parker Brothers and Hasbro's board game Monopoly. They have been developed by numerous teams and released on multiple platforms over 35+ years.
Roblox is a 2006 online game platform and game creation system developed by Roblox Corporation that allows users to program games and play games created by other users. Created by David Baszucki and Erik Cassel in 2004 and released in 2006, the platform hosts user-created games of multiple genres coded in the programming language Lua. For most of Roblox's history, it was relatively small, both as a platform and as a company. Roblox began to grow rapidly in the second half of the 2010s, and this growth has been accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Age of Empires (AoE) is a real-time strategy video game based on history, developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft, and the first game in the Age of Empires series. The game uses the Genie Engine, a 2D sprite-based game engine. The game allows the user to act as the leader of an ancient civilization by advancing it through four ages, gaining access to new and improved units with each advance.
Zynga Inc. is an American developer running social video game services. It was founded in April 2007, with headquarters in San Mateo, California. The company primarily focuses on mobile and social networking platforms. Zynga states its mission as "connecting the world through games".
A social network game is a type of online game that is played through social networks or social media. They typically feature gamification systems with multiplayer gameplay mechanics. Social network games were originally implemented as browser games. As mobile gaming took off, the games moved to mobile as well. While they share many aspects of traditional video games, social network games often employ additional ones that make them distinct. Traditionally they are oriented to be social games and casual games.
Kixeye is a video game company founded in July 2007 and headquartered in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. The company creates, develops and publishes massively multiplayer online real-time strategy games (MMORTS) for PC and mobile devices. Kixeye gained popularity as a pioneer in midcore action games featuring real-time combat on the social networking website Facebook. Following their initial launch, Kixeye's games generated twenty times more revenue per daily active user than other social games, retaining active users five times longer on average.
CastleVille is a defunct social network game made by Zynga's Dallas studio and was released in November 2011. It combined a number of elements from the company's other "Ville" range of games. On launch it had received a million "likes" on Facebook. By the end of its first month, it had become the fifth most popular game on Facebook with 26.5 million players. The game was a freemium game, meaning there is no cost to play but players have the option of purchasing premium content.
Pot Farm is a farming simulation social network game developed by Brain Warp Studios and owned by East Side Games. Gameplay involves planting and harvesting different strains of cannabis and manufacturing cannabis-based food items. Many of the plants, quests and achievements are named after elements of cannabis subculture.
Forge of Empires is a browser-based strategy game developed by InnoGames. It was first launched on closed beta on 29 March 2012. The game was initially released on 17 April 2012. In 2013, a television advertising campaign helped the game reach 10 million user registrations. The game was later released on iOS 2014, and Android in 2015. The game is similar to both SimCity and Clash of Clans, but includes turn-based strategy elements. As of 2023, the game earned over $1 billion in lifetime revenue. More than 50% of players play the game on mobile devices. As of 2023, the game has over 130 million registered players.
Imperia Online JSC is a Bulgarian game production and publishing company founded by Moni Dochev and Dobroslav Dimitrov. Based in Sofia, Bulgaria, the company originally concentrated primarily on browser-based games with their main title being Imperia Online, but later started developing mobile games as well.
Final Fantasy XV: A New Empire is a freemium massively multiplayer online strategy game developed by Epic Action and published by MZ.
Small Giant Games is a mobile game development company based in Helsinki, Finland. It was founded in 2013 by former employees of mobile game maker Sulake. After producing two casual games, Small Giant found success with a match-three role-playing game entitled Empires and Puzzles. After the success of Empires and Puzzles, Small Giant was acquired by Zynga in December 2018.
Stillfront Group is a Sweden-based company specialized in the acquisition and management of mobile and browser game studios.
