Storm8

Last updated
Storm8
Industry Video games
Founded Redwood Shores, California
FoundersGarrett J. Remes, Perry Tam, William Siu, Chak Ming Li, Laura Yip
HeadquartersSan Mateo, California
Parent Stillfront Group
Website www.storm8.com

Storm8 Inc. is a mobile social game developer founded in 2009 by former Zynga designer, Garrett J. Remes, as well as former Facebook engineers, including Perry Tam, William Siu, Chak Ming Li, and Laura Yip [1] in Redwood Shores, California. Notable games include the Restaurant Story franchise, Dragon Story, Bubble Mania, Fantasy Forest Story, Castle Story and iMobsters. [2]

Contents

In 2015, the company had more than 50 million monthly active users and more than 1 billion downloads on iOS and Android. [3] The company also published games under the TeamLava, Shark Party and FireMocha brands, [4] until it consolidated it under Storm8 Studios in March 2015. [5]

History & milestones

In June 2011, Storm8 was one of the first free-to-play mobile game publishers to announce that they earned $1 million in a single day. [6] The following year, technology news site TechCrunch referred to Storm8 as the "quiet mobile gaming giant" for successfully building one of the biggest mobile social gaming networks without raising any venture capital funding, and remaining relatively quiet with the press. [7]

In December 2012, the company celebrated 2 million game downloads in one day. [8]

In January 2020, Storm8 was acquired by Stillfront Group for US $300 million. [9] The acquisition was completed in February 2020.

Expansion moves

In 2014 the company appointed game industry veterans, adding Disney, EA and Zynga experience to its leadership team. [10] [11]

The company announced a deal with Hasbro Inc. in December 2014 to launch Monopoly Bingo! and Clue Bingo! on iOS and Android. [12] [13] These games were later rebranded as Bingo Tycoon! in January of 2021.

In June 2019, the company partnered with the Property Brothers to launch Property Brothers Home Design on iOS and Android. [14]

Games

TitleYearPlatforms
Property Brothers Home Design2019iOS & Android
Home Design Makeover2018iOS & Android
Dream City: Metropolis2016iOS & Android
Bakery Story 22015iOS & Android
Frozen Frenzy Mania2015iOS & Android
CLUE/CLUEDO Bingo (discontinued)2015iOS & Android
Polar Pop Mania2015iOS
Hungry Babies Mania2015iOS & Android
Fortune Slots2015iOS 10 or earlier
Diamond Quest2015iOS & Android
Restaurant Story 22014iOS & Android
Bingo Tycoon (formally known as MONOPOLY Bingo)2014iOS & Android
Fish Frenzy Mania2014iOS
Fantasy Forest Story2014iOS & Android
Cupcake Mania2014iOS & Android
Fruit Splash Mania2013iOS 10 or earlier
Hidden Objects: Mystery Crimes2013iOS 10 or earlier
8Ball by Storm82013iOS 10 or earlier
Match the Dots by IceMochi2013iOS
Candy Blast Mania (also known as Sugar Swap Mania)2013iOS & Android
Farm Story 22013iOS & Android
Word Scramble2013iOS
Fruit Mania2013iOS 10 or earlier
Word Search Puzzles2013iOS & Android
Solitaire Classic Card Game2013iOS & Android
Bingo!2012iOS & Android
Jewel Mania2012iOS & Android
Castle Story2012iOS & Android
Home Design Story2012iOS
City Story Metro2012iOS 10 or earlier
Bubble Mania2012iOS & Android
Poker2012iOS 10 or earlier
Dragon Story2012iOS & Android
Pet Hotel Story2012iOS 10 or earlier
Slots2012iOS & Android
Pet Shop Story2011iOS & Android
Zoo Story 22011iOS 10 or earlier & Andriod
Fashion Story2011iOS & Android
Bakery Story2011iOS & Android
Restaurant Story2011iOS & Android
Farm Story2010iOS 10 or earlier & Android

Strategies

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">King (company)</span> Video game developer

King.com Limited, trading as King and also known as King Digital Entertainment, is a Maltese video game developer and publisher based in St. Julian's, Malta that specialises in social games. King gained prominence after releasing the cross-platform title Candy Crush Saga in 2012, considered one of the most financially successful games utilising the freemium model. King was acquired by Activision Blizzard in February 2016 for US$5.9 billion, and operates as its own entity within that company. King is led by Riccardo Zacconi, who has served in the role of chief executive officer since co-founding the company in 2003. Gerhard Florin took over Melvyn Morris's role as chairman in November 2014. As of 2017, King employs 2,000 people.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zynga</span> American social game developer

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".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Spil Games</span> Dutch video game developer

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">OMGPop</span>

OMGPop, stylized as OMGPOP and formerly known as i'minlikewithyou or iilwy, was an independent flash game studio. In 2013, it was purchased by Zynga Inc.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wooga</span> German game developer

Wooga is a German game software company based in Berlin that develops story-driven casual games for mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets and social networks like Facebook. It has developed mobile games such as June's Journey, Pearl's Peril and Switchcraft. The company is part of the social games company Playtika.

CrowdStar is a former developer of Facebook and mobile games, based in Burlingame, California, United States and Dublin, Ireland. The company developed several titles for the Facebook platform, with some of its most popular titles being Happy Aquarium, Happy Pets, Wasteland Empires and It Girl, and a number of titles on mobile for the iOS, Android and Windows Markets, including Design Home, Fish WithAttitude, Phuzzle, Top Girl, and Covet Fashion. It was acquired by Glu Mobile in 2016.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Unity Technologies</span> American software developer

Unity Software Inc. is an American video game software development company based in San Francisco. It was founded in Denmark in 2004 as Over the Edge Entertainment and changed its name in 2007. Unity Technologies is best known for the development of Unity, a licensed game engine used to create video games and other applications.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jam City (company)</span> American video game developer

Jam City, Inc. is an American video game developer based in Culver City, California. The company was founded in 2010 by Chris DeWolfe, Colin Digiaro, Aber Whitcomb, and Josh Yguado. Jam City has nine studios located in the United States, Canada, South America, and Europe. As of 2021, it employs 825 people. Netmarble is the largest shareholder in Jam City. As of 2021, Jam City's games have 31 million monthly active users and 1.3 billion total downloads.

<i>Ruby Blast</i> 2012 video game

Ruby Blast is a tile-matching video game by Zynga. The game was first released in June 2012 on Facebook and Zynga.com and later re-branded to Ruby Blast Adventures after Zynga added a new mode with map progression. An iOS version of Ruby Blast was released in November 2012 with an Android version expected soon. In the game, players try to match three or more gems to activate power ups and dig deeper into a mine. Ruby Blast on iOS is the first arcade mobile game from Zynga and the latest Zynga game that enables players to carry progress from the Web version to mobile. On December 5, 2013 it was announced that the game would be closed. Ruby Blast was closed on January 4, 2014.

<i>Montopia</i> 2012 video game

Montopia was a defunct social role-playing game, the first created by Zynga for mobile devices. Players attempted to uncover the truth about Montopia, a lost monster Utopia while collecting and fusing monsters together to strengthen their abilities. The game was shut down on December 21, 2012.

<i>Candy Crush Saga</i> Video game created in 2012

Candy Crush Saga is a free-to-play tile-matching video game released by King on April 12, 2012, originally for Facebook; other versions for iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and Windows 10 followed. It is a variation of their browser game Candy Crush.

Scopely, Inc is an American interactive entertainment company and mobile-first video game developer and publisher. The company is headquartered in Culver City, California, with offices across the US, EMEA and Asia.

Socialpoint is a Spanish video game developer based in Barcelona. Founded in October 2008 by Horacio Martos and Andrés Bou, the company specializes in free-to-play mobile and social network games. Socialpoint was acquired by Take-Two Interactive in February 2017.

Flurry is an American mobile analytics, monetization, and advertising company founded in 2005. The company develops and markets a platform for analyzing consumer interactions with mobile applications, packages for marketers to advertise in-apps, as well as a service for applying monetization structures to mobile apps. Flurry analyzes 150 billion app sessions per month. The company's analytics platform tracks application sessions in iOS, Android, HTML5, and JavaME platforms. Flurry has raised a total of $65 million in funding since its founding and in March 2014 announced that it would partner with Research Now to create a panel database on mobile users. Flurry was acquired by Yahoo! on July 21, 2014 for somewhere between $200 and $300 million.

Chartboost is a San Francisco-based mobile game in-app programmatic advertising and monetization platform. Chartboost SDK enables developers to monetize on their mobile apps and connect advertisers to global in-app inventory. Chartboost's platform allows video game developers to create customized interstitial and video ads to promote new games. Developers have direct access to game data derived from Chartboost-enabled games. As of 2016, Chartboost had been integrated into more than 300,000 games with 40 billion game sessions per month.

Betable is a London-based company that develops and markets a real-money gambling platform for the social gaming industry. The company is licensed by the United Kingdom Gambling Commission and the Alderney Gambling Control Commission and is certified by third-party testing houses. The company has raised a total of $23 million in venture funding from, among others, Venture51, Greylock Partners, and Founders Fund.

TinyCo is a mobile video game studio and the creator of Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff, Futurama Worlds of Tomorrow, Marvel Avengers Academy, Guess!, Spellstorm, Tiny Castle, Tiny Monsters, Tiny Village, and Tiny Zoo.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arjun Sethi (entrepreneur)</span> American entrepreneur, investor and executive

Arjun Sethi is an American internet entrepreneur, investor and executive. He is co-founder and partner at venture capital firm Tribe Capital. He previously was partner at Social Capital and served as an executive at Yahoo! where he launched Yahoo! Livetext. Before that, he was co-founder and CEO of MessageMe and he was CEO of Lolapps, the developer behind Ravenwood Fair.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peak Games</span> Mobile gaming company based in Istanbul, Turkey

Peak Games is a mobile gaming company based in Istanbul, Turkey. The privately-held company was acquired by Zynga in June 2020 for $1.8 billion. The company launched the games Toy Blast in 2015 and Toon Blast in 2017, both collectively have more than 12 million average mobile daily active users as of June 2020.

References

  1. "Moving On From Facebook". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 11 August 2015.
  2. "Storm8 – Games".
  3. Dean Takahashi (March 3, 2015). "Mobile publisher Storm8 hits a billion downloads for its casual games" . Retrieved 26 August 2015.
  4. "#15 Storm8 NO CHANGE". Pocket Gamer. March 18, 2013. Retrieved 11 August 2015.
  5. Harris, Richard. "The Storm8 Mobile Game Network is Now Storm8 Studios as it Announces 1 Billion Downloads at GDC". App Developer Magazine.
  6. Jim Squires (June 10, 2011). "Storm8 has their first million dollar day". Gamezebo. Retrieved 11 August 2015.
  7. Kim-Mai Cutler (May 7, 2012). "The Quiet Mobile Gaming Giant: Storm8 Passes 300M Downloads, Has Reached 100M Unique Devices". Tech Crunch. Retrieved 11 August 2015.
  8. Kim-Mai Cutler (December 31, 2012). "Storm8 Grabs 2M Downloads In One Day On Christmas". Tech Crunch. Retrieved 11 August 2015.
  9. Takahashi, Dean (January 23, 2020). "Storm8's journey from a Facebook gaming startup to a $300 million acquisition | VentureBeat". VentureBeat.
  10. "Storm8 hires duo of industry veterans". Develop. October 9, 2014. Retrieved 11 August 2015.
  11. "Storm8 wants to become a household name in mobile games (interview)". July 7, 2014.
  12. Dean Takahashi (December 11, 2014). "Storm8 launches Monopoly Bingo! mobile game in deal with Hasbro". Venture Beat. Retrieved 11 August 2015.
  13. Mike Minotti (October 15, 2015). "Clue comes to mobile...in Bingo form". Venture Beat.
  14. "Storm8 – Storm8 Partners with Drew and Jonathan Scott to Launch Property Brothers Home Design Mobile Game" . Retrieved 2021-07-28.