IGG Inc.

Last updated
IGG Inc.
Company type Public
SEHK:  799
Industry Video games
FoundedJune 6, 2006;17 years ago (2006-06-06)
Headquarters
Singapore
Products Lords Mobile, Castle Clash  [ zh ], Clash of Lords 2
RevenueDecrease2.svg HK$ 6.05 billion (2021) [1]
Decrease2.svg HK$452.8 million (2021) [1]
Website www.igg.com

IGG Inc. (I Got Games, also previously known as Internet Gaming Gate) is a Chinese video game developer and publisher. The company was founded in 2006 in Fuzhou, Fujian, China. IGG is now headquartered in Singapore, namely "IGG Singapore Pte. Ltd." (formerly "Sky Union Pte. Ltd."), since 2009 and has branches in China, the United States, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Belarus, Thailand, Philippines and Hong Kong.

Contents

IGG is best known for the development of mobile games such as Lords Mobile , Castle Clash, Clash of Lords, and for formerly publishing various massively multiplayer online games in North America. IGG has been listed by App Annie as one of the "Top 52 Publishers" for seven consecutive years. [2]

"Lords Mobile", launched in 2016, is IGG’s first cross-platform, multi-language, real-time game designed for global gamers. As at 30 June 2020, it has approximately 320 million registered users worldwide. According to App Annie, "Lords Mobile" had dominated the worldwide rankings as the top-grossing mobile war strategy game for two consecutive years since its launch. [3]

Company

IGG primarily focuses on the research and development of video games and software, but is also not limited to its other functions of business such as operations, product promotions and e-commerce. Mobile games are by far IGG's biggest products, which include Lords Mobile. MMORPGs include GodsWar Online, Voyage Century Online, Wonderland Online, Tales of Pirates, Myth War Online. IGG has also developed multiple streaming platforms such as WeGamers and Pocketlive.

On October 18, 2013 IGG was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, followed by an official transfer on July 7, 2015 from being on the GEM board to the Main Board with the current stock number of 799.HK. [4]

In January 2016 IGG was voted as the "Most Promising HKEx Listed Companies" in the 13th China's Financial Annual Champion Awards. In the selection of Top 50 Global Mobile Game Company held by Pocket Gamer, IGG ranked the 17th. In May, it launched new game Lords Mobile in North American, ranked TOP 2 in American IOS F2P list.

Lords Mobile also won the "Best Competitive Game" followed by an Android Excellence award in 2017. [5] In 2013, IGG transformed to a "mid-core" operator from a "hard-core" game maker. [6] IGG also established development centres in 10 countries and hired developers from different countries in 2019. [7]

Free-to-play model

Free-to-play, also known as F2P or FtP, refers to video games which give players access to a significant portion of their content without paying. Since the company's creation, games of IGG has traditionally followed a freemium model where players can play a fully functional game for free, but also have the opportunity to upgrade their gaming experience through a variety of microtransactions. While supporters argue that F2P games give the players more financial freedom as to how much each individual player wants to play, critics of the system have claimed that the F2P model unfairly favors players who spend more on each game as shown by all games of this type across all the available platforms.

Non-mobile game products

WeGamers Was a social app launched in June 2016 to help players of IGG games to become more connected. The players could use this app as a way to discuss game strategies, to call for other players when in battle, or to simply chat like any other social app. Link Messenger is a messenger app launched in December 2015. Contrary to WeGamers, this app is similar to other messaging apps and not specifically targeted for the gaming community. WeGamers close the servers on July 22, 2022

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MSN</span> Collection of Internet sites

MSN is an American web portal and related collection of Internet services and apps for Windows and mobile devices, provided by Microsoft and launched on August 24, 1995, alongside the release of Windows 95.

Fantasy Westward Journey is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed and operated by the Chinese company NetEase. It was released for the Microsoft Windows platform in December 2001. The game is the most popular online game in China as of May 2007 by peak concurrent users (PCU), with a peak count of 1.5 million. Registered users reached 25 million by April 2005, with 576,000 peak concurrent players on 198 game servers, which was considered the fastest-growing online game in China at the time. Average concurrent users was reported in August 2006 to be around 400,000.

<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">Supercell (video game company)</span> Finnish video game developer

Supercell Ltd is a Finnish mobile game development company based in Helsinki. Founded on 14 May 2010, the company's debut game was the browser game Gunshine.net, and after its release in 2011, Supercell started developing games for mobile devices. Since then, the company has fully released six mobile games: Hay Day, Clash of Clans, Boom Beach, Clash Royale, Brawl Stars and Squad Busters, which are freemium fast-paced games and have been very successful for the company, the first two generating revenue of €2 million per day in 2013.

PapayaMobile (木瓜移動) also known as Papaya, is a mobile technology company responsible for three mobile products: AppFlood, a programmatic mobile advertising platform, Papaya Games, a mobile games development studio, and Kiwi Calendar, a calendar app for mobile and web users. Papaya is based in Beijing with offices in San Francisco and London.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">BlueStacks</span> American technology company

BlueStacks is an American technology company recognized for its creation of the BlueStacks App Player and other cloud-based cross-platform products. The BlueStacks App Player enables the execution of Android applications on computers running Microsoft Windows or macOS. The company's establishment traces back to 2009, founded by Jay Vaishnav, Suman Saraf, and Rosen Sharma.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Line (software)</span> Freeware instant communications app

Line is a freeware app for instant communications on electronic devices, developed by LY Corporation. Line users exchange: texts, images, video and audio and conduct free VoIP conversations and video conferences. In addition, Line is a platform providing various services including: digital wallet as Line Pay, news stream as LINE Today, video on demand as Line TV and digital comic distribution as Line Manga and Line Webtoon.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Link Motion Inc</span>

Link Motion Inc, formerly NetQin and NQ Mobile, is a multinational technology company that develops, licenses, supports and sells software and services that focus on the smart ride business. Link Motion sells carputers for car businesses, consumer ride sharing services, as well as legacy mobile security, productivity and other related applications. Link Motion maintains dual headquarters in Dallas, Texas, United States and Beijing, China. A Court Receiver, lawyer Robert Seiden, was appointed over Link Motion in February 2019 in the United States in the federal district court in the Southern District of New York by Judge Victor Marrero. The Receiver removed Wenyong “Vincent” Shi as chairman and chief executive officer, and replaced him by appointing Mr. Lilin “Francis” Guo.

Momo is a free social search and instant messaging mobile app. The app allows users to chat with nearby friends and strangers. Momo provides users with free instant messaging services through Wifi, 3G and 4G. The client software is available for Android, iOS, and Windows Phone.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scopely</span> American entertainment company

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.

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.

Yoozoo Games is a video game developer and publisher of browser and mobile games, primarily massively multiplayer online games (MMORPG), in Asia, Europe and North America. The company was founded in 2009 by Lin Qi, created GTArcade and started publishing its titles overseas in 2013, and was listed on the Shenzhen stock exchange in 2014.

Kakao Corporation is a South Korean Internet conglomerate headquartered in Jeju City. It was formed through the merger of Daum Communications and the original Kakao Inc in 2010. The company was renamed Daum Kakao in 2014. In 2015 it was rebranded once more, reverting simply to Kakao.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Smilegate</span> South Korean video game company

Smilegate is a South Korean video game company headquartered in Pangyo. It develops, publishes, and services online games on mobile and PC platforms.

<i>Lords Mobile</i> 2016 freemium mobile strategy game

Lords Mobile is a real-time strategy and construction game developed and published by IGG, available to download on Android, iOS, and Steam. It was released globally in 14 March 2016. The game is free to play and offers in-app purchases. According to App Annie, the game is one of the top-grossing apps (strategy) on the App Store (iOS) and Google Play. The official description of the game states that it has more than 200 million players around the world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nintendo mobile games</span> Overview of mobile games by and the relationship with mobile games of Nintendo

Nintendo, a Japanese home and handheld video game console manufacturer and game developer, has traditionally focused on games that utilize unique elements of its consoles. However, the growth of the mobile gaming market in the early 2010s led to several successive fiscal quarters where they were running at a loss, partially due to the failure of the Wii U. Nintendo, led by president Satoru Iwata at the time, developed a strategy for entering into the mobile games market with development partner DeNA, as a means of introducing their franchise properties to mobile players with a goal of bringing them to buy Nintendo's consoles later. From 2015 to 2020 Nintendo has internally developed a number of mobile games, while also publishing games with other developers, including games outside of the initial DeNA partnership. Several of them have entered the top-downloaded games list on the iOS App Store and Google Play stores, earning over US$100 million in revenue in total. However, as Nintendo's next console, the Nintendo Switch, proved a financial success for the company, coupled with dwindling numbers on its mobile games during the COVID-19 pandemic, Nintendo quietly backed off its mobile strategy starting in 2020, though continued to back Pokémon Go and future Pokémon games.

WeGame is the flagship game portal of the Chinese company Tencent.

<i>Ludo King</i> Free-to-play video game application

Ludo King is a free-to-play mobile game application developed by Gametion Technologies Pvt Ltd, a game studio based in Navi Mumbai, India. Gametion is owned by Vikash Jaiswal. The game is developed on the Unity game engine and is available on Android, iOS, Kindle, Windows Phone and Microsoft Windows platforms. The game is a modernization of the board game Ludo, which is based on the ancient Indian game of Pachisi.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of mobile games</span>

The popularisation of mobile games began as early as 1997 with the introduction of Snake preloaded on Nokia feature phones, demonstrating the practicality of games on these devices. Several mobile device manufacturers included preloaded games in the wake of Snake's success. In 1999, the introduction of the i-mode service in Japan allowed a wide variety of more advanced mobile games to be downloaded onto smartphones, though the service was largely limited to Japan. By the early 2000s, the technical specifications of Western handsets had also matured to the point where downloadable applications could be supported, but mainstream adoption continued to be hampered by market fragmentation between different devices, operating environments, and distributors.

References

  1. 1 2 "2021 Annual Report" (PDF).
  2. "Milestone - About IGG - IGG Investor Relations". investor.igg.com. Retrieved 2024-04-26.
  3. "IGG: The Mobile Lords". Forbes India. Retrieved 2024-04-26.
  4. "Igg Inc (0799) Stock Price & News". Google Finance. Retrieved 2024-04-26.
  5. "5 of the Highest-Grossing Android Games of 2020 and How They Made Money". 20 January 2021.
  6. "Cashed-up IGG readies more titles in mobile focus". 19 October 2013.
  7. "Kevin Xu, Chief Operating Officer of IGG INC". The CEO Magazine. Retrieved 2024-04-26.