Type | Subsidiary |
---|---|
Industry | Video games |
Founded | 2014 |
Founders |
|
Headquarters | , France |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people | |
Parent | Ubisoft (2016–present) |
Website | www |
Ketchapp SARL is a French video game publisher based in Paris, specializing in the mobile games market. Founded in 2014 by brothers Antoine and Michel Morcos, the company first came into the public eye later that year, through its port of the open-source game 2048 . Ketchapp has been accused of cloning popular casual games by other developers. When Ketchapp was acquired by Ubisoft in September 2016, the company had more than 700 million downloads across their portfolio of games. [1]
Ketchapp was founded by brothers Antoine and Michel Morcos in 2014 in Paris. [2]
In March 2014, the company cloned Gabriele Cirulli's open-source puzzle game 2048 and published it as an iOS app, with advertising and in-app purchases. [3] It eventually reached the top of the iOS App Store charts. [4] Ketchapp became successful by adapting ideas from other popular apps, with many of its releases being variations on existing games, such as reworking the popular 2013 game Flappy Bird as Run Bird Run. [5]
In February 2015, the company released the scrolling reaction game ZigZag, [6] which was praised for not being a clone of an existing game, [5] however, in April 2015, developer Mudloop accused Ketchapp that ZigZag was a version of their game, Zig Zag Boom, that was submitted to but rejected by Ketchapp, and published under a different title without credit. [7] Mudloop later stated that they had learned that their submission of Zig Zag Boom to Ketchapp post-dated Ketchapp having a working version of ZigZag. [8]
In 2016, Christian Calderon joined Ketchapp as chief revenue officer. [9]
As of November 2017, Ketchapp has released 137 games, [10] including Jelly Jump. [11] On 27 September 2016, French video game publisher Ubisoft announced that they had acquired Ketchapp. [12]
On 16 May 2017, Ketchapp released a fidget spinner-themed game, titled simply Fidget Spinner and developed by Estoty. The app received seven million downloads in the first two weeks after it was released, [13] as a result of which Ketchapp set up a Fanfiber store to sell limited edition Ketchapp-branded fidget spinners.
Ubisoft Entertainment SA is a French video game company headquartered in Montreuil with development studios across the world. Its video game franchises include Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, For Honor, Just Dance, Prince of Persia, Rabbids, Rayman, Tom Clancy's, and Watch Dogs.
Gameloft SE is a French video game publisher based in Paris, founded in December 1999 by Ubisoft co-founder Michel Guillemot. The company operates 18 development studios worldwide, and publishes games with a special focus on the mobile games market. Formerly a public company traded at the Paris Bourse, Gameloft was acquired by media conglomerate Vivendi in 2016.
A video game clone is either a video game or a video game console very similar to, or heavily inspired by, a previous popular game or console. Clones are typically made to take financial advantage of the popularity of the cloned game or system, but clones may also result from earnest attempts to create homages or expand on game mechanics from the original game. An additional motivation unique to the medium of games as software with limited compatibility, is the desire to port a simulacrum of a game to platforms that the original is unavailable for or unsatisfactorily implemented on.
Kongregate is an American video game publisher and web gaming portal. The website features over 110,000 online games and 30+ mobile games available to the public, while also publishing games for PC and console. In 2010, it was purchased by Gamestop Corporation and was then acquired by Modern Times Group MT AB in 2017.
Spil Games is a Dutch video game developer based in Hilversum. The company publishes free-to-play games for Android and iOS devices, as well as for the Facebook Platform.
Pocket Gamer is a video game website that focuses on mobile, portable and handheld games. The site launched in 2005 and is published and owned by UK company Steel Media Ltd. The site covers all major portable and mobile gaming formats, including iPhone, iPad, Android, Nintendo Switch and others. It was one of the first to cover the iPhone gaming market. The publication also hands out awards for handheld games to recognize them in several categories. The British newspaper The Guardian at one time syndicated a list of recommended mobile games from Pocket Gamer, especially the list of recommended games for each month. In the years since launch, Steel Media Ltd has created many brand spin-offs, including the industry-facing PocketGamer.biz site and a series of conferences called Pocket Gamer Connects.
Melsoft Games is a Lithuanian video game developer focussing on casual mobile games. The company was founded in Belarus in 2008, and later opened offices in Cyprus and Lithuania. It was acquired by Israeli mobile video game developer Moon Active in December 2020.
Sonic Dash is a 2013 endless runner mobile game developed by Hardlight and published by Japanese game studio Sega. It is Hardlight's second Sonic the Hedgehog game, the first being 2012's Sonic Jump. The game was released in March 2013 for iOS, November 2013 for Android, and December 2014 for Windows Phone and Windows, along with an arcade release in November 2015 as Sonic Dash Extreme. It was initially released as a paid application, but was made free-to-play a month after its iOS release.
InnoGames GmbH is a German video game developer based in Hamburg. Founded in 2007, it focuses on the development of browser and mobile games. The company now has millions of registered players and revenues that reached €190 million in 2019.
Flappy Bird is a mobile game developed by Vietnamese video game artist and programmer Dong Nguyen, under his game development company .Gears. The game is a side-scroller where the player controls a bird, attempting to fly between columns of green pipes without hitting them. Nguyen created the game over the period of several days, using a bird protagonist that he had designed for a cancelled game in 2012.
Threes is a puzzle video game by Sirvo, an independent development team consisting of game designer Asher Vollmer, illustrator Greg Wohlwend, and composer Jimmy Hinson. The game was released on February 6, 2014, for iOS devices and later ported to Android, Xbox One, and Windows Phone. In Threes, the player slides numbered tiles on a grid to combine addends and multiples of three. The game ends when there are no moves left on the grid and the tiles are counted for a final score.
2048 is a single-player sliding tile puzzle video game written by Italian web developer Gabriele Cirulli and published on GitHub. The objective of the game is to slide numbered tiles on a grid to combine them to create a tile with the number 2048; however, one can continue to play the game after reaching the goal, creating tiles with larger numbers. It was originally written in JavaScript and CSS over a weekend, and released on 9 March 2014 as free and open-source software subject to the MIT License. Versions for iOS and Android followed in May 2014.
Retry was a free-to-play retro-styled side-scrolling video game developed by Rovio LVL11 and published by Rovio Entertainment. Inspired by Flappy Bird, Retry had similar controls. The game was soft launched in Finland, Canada, and Poland in May 2014. The worldwide iOS and Android release was on October 22, 2014. As of 2017 Retry has been taken off the app stores.
Crossy Road is an arcade video game released on 20 November 2014. It was developed and published by Australian video game developer Hipster Whale, with the name and concept of the game playing on the age-old joke "Why did the chicken cross the road?" The game has also been described as "endless Frogger".
Creative Mobile is an independent video game developer and publisher based in Tallinn, Estonia.
The Sims Mobile is a life simulation game based on The Sims 4 and The Sims FreePlay for Android and iOS devices. It was announced on May 9, 2017, in a launch trailer. The game was released on March 6, 2018. It features a multiplayer component and includes story elements.
Hardlight is a British video game development studio based in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire. Revealed in January 2012, it is focused on mobile games for smartphones and is one of Sega's five studios under Sega Europe.
Voodoo SAS is a French video game developer and publisher based in Paris. The company was founded in 2013 by Alexandre Yazdi and Laurent Ritter. Voodoo's games, predominantly free-to-play "hyper-casual games", have been collectively downloaded 5 billion times as of May 2021. The company has been criticised for cloning other games.
A hyper-casual game is a mobile video game which is easy-to-play, and usually free-to-play; they also feature very minimalistic user interfaces. Popularized in 2017 by game makers such as Kwalee, Ketchapp and Voodoo, these games can be quickly played after downloading, usually without any tutorial or instructions. They also often use a 2D design with a simple color scheme, easy mechanics adding to their simplicity. Usually featuring infinite looped mechanics, hyper-casual games are playable for an infinite amount of time, leading to their addictive nature. Some argue hyper-casuals are a business model, rather than a genre. These games are often played while multitasking, which is why their simple user interface is essential. Because of the lack of a robust in-game economy and free download cost of most hyper-causal games, revenue is mostly generated from ads.
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