Today's News |
Vancouver-Based Independent Game Company Phoenix Labs Acquired by Digital Entertainment Company Garena
Thursday, January 30, 2020Company Profile | Follow Company
Burnaby, BC and Singapore, January 29, 2020--(T-Net)--Sea Limited (NYSE: SE), a leading global consumer internet company, today announced that its digital entertainment arm, Garena, has acquired Vancouver-based Phoenix Labs, an acclaimed independent games development company and the studio behind the popular cross-platform co-op action RPG, Dauntless.
The teams intend to work together to continue building Phoenix Labs' world-class development team, supporting the growth of Dauntless, and exploring new opportunities in global markets and on mobile. The transaction closed in recent days and the company intends to maintain its current studio in Burnaby, BC.
Phoenix Labs CEO Jesse Houston and Sea group CEO Forrest Li (Photo Credit: Phoenix Labs)
Jesse Houston, CEO and co-founder of Phoenix Labs, said, "Our partners at Garena have been our most steadfast supporters since the early days of Phoenix Labs, and we are excited to join forces with a global games leader. With this next step, we're able to ensure that we can provide the best possible experience for Dauntless players around the world. We're extremely excited about what the future holds for Phoenix Labs, as we continue to support our ever-growing Dauntless community and explore future games."
Forrest Li, Founder and Group Chief Executive Officer of Sea, said, "We couldn't be happier to welcome Phoenix Labs to the Garena family. Over the last few years, we have watched Phoenix Labs mature into one of the best development teams in the business and launch a hugely exciting title in Dauntless. We also know that they share our mission of making great games, creating the best teams, and putting players first. Our skills sets are highly complementary, and we see many exciting opportunities ahead that our teams can explore together."
Phoenix Labs was founded in Vancouver in 2014 by veteran game executives with a track record of working on some of the world's best-known game franchises. It now has a team of more than 100 developers with decades of experience in building world-class AAA games across its offices in Vancouver, Canada, San Francisco, and Seattle, Washington.
The studio launched its debut title Dauntless, a cross-platform co-op action RPG, in 2019.
Headquartered in Singapore, Garena is a global leading games developer and publisher. It had more than 320 million quarterly active users in the third quarter of 2019. Its self-developed title, Free Fire, is one of the world's most popular mobile games and was the most downloaded mobile game globally in 2019 according to App Annie.
Garena was one of Phoenix Labs' earliest investors and has supported the growth of the company and the development of Dauntless over the last several years.
Following the acquisition, the existing management team at Phoenix Labs will continue to run the studio.
In addition to bolstering Garena's in-house content creation capabilities, the partnership allows Phoenix Labs to tap into Garena's global network and unique strengths in mobile games and community building.
The companies will work together to continue adding new features to Dauntless and explore new growth opportunities in markets such as Asia and Latin America, and on mobile.
Phoenix Labs announced a Series-C Financing led By Sapphire Ventures to expand their studio operations and development of Action-RPG, Dauntless, in October 2018.
Full terms of the acquisition have not been released.
About Sea
Sea Limited (NYSE: SE) is a leading global consumer internet company founded in Singapore in 2009. Our mission is to better the lives of consumers and small businesses with technology. We operate three core businesses across digital entertainment, e-commerce, and digital financial services, known as Garena, Shopee, and SeaMoney, respectively. Garena is a leading global online games developer and publisher. Shopee is the largest pan-regional e-commerce platform in Southeast Asia and Taiwan. SeaMoney is one of the fastest-growing digital financial services platforms in Southeast Asia.
For more information, visit www.seagroup.com.
About Phoenix Labs
Phoenix Labs is a game company based in Vancouver, British Columbia with offices in San Mateo, California and Seattle, Washington. The company was founded in 2014 to create games for its passionate community and evolve the way great games are made and enjoyed. They aspire to create new AAA gaming experiences that their community will share for years to come. Their debut title, Dauntless, a co-op Action RPG, is developed by a veteran team from BioWare, Riot Games, and other acclaimed studios. For more information on Phoenix Labs and to view open positions, please visit https://www.phoenixlabs.ca/.
-------------------------------------------
Listed below is a letter from Phoenix Labs CEO Jesse Houston announcing the acquisition.
-------------------------------------------
THE NEXT STEP FOR PHOENIX LABS
A LETTER FROM CEO JESSE HOUSTON
As Phoenix Labs begins a new year and a new decade! We've been reflecting on how amazing and inspiring the Dauntless journey has been. This time last year we were gearing up to launch Dauntless on consoles and the Epic Games Store. Since then, we've launched on Nintendo Switch and watched our community grow to over 20 million players. From all of us here at Phoenix Labs, thank you for helping make Dauntless one of the largest online RPG success stories of all time.
Looking forward to 2020 and beyond, our goals are even more ambitious. We want Dauntless to be one of the best games ever, which is why today we have some very exciting news to share with you:
Today, Garena and Phoenix Labs will be officially joining forces.
Garena is a digital entertainment company and one of the largest forces for gaming in Southeast Asia. More importantly, they are one of our longest-running investors - one that we've considered a close partner for years. They share our vision for connecting gamers worldwide and creating lasting franchises. For reference, they make Free Fire, the most downloaded mobile game in the world in 2019. They also publish games like Call of Duty®: Mobile, Arena of Valor, and League of Legends to millions of players across the globe.
For you, our valuable community, this change means we're able to continue to add even more to Dauntless! More Behemoths, more weapons, more features like Escalation - in short, more of everything. This includes expanding to new regions and new platforms.
I realize that announcements like this can sound daunting at first (no pun intended), but I'm excited to say that that Dauntless and Phoenix Labs have an incredible, promising future. This studio is a family, and everyone here is excited to welcome the wonderful people at Garena into it.
If you have any questions, please let us know. We love hearing from you!
Clear Skies, Slayers!
Forward-looking Statements
This announcement contains forward-looking statements. These statements are made under the "safe harbor" provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology such as "will," "expects," "anticipates," "future," "intends," "plans," "believes," "estimates," "confident," "guidance," and similar statements. Among other things, statements that are not historical facts, including statements about Sea's beliefs and expectations, the business, financial and market outlook, and projections from its management in this announcement, as well as Sea's strategic and operational plans, contain forward-looking statements.
Sea may also make written or oral forward-looking statements in its periodic reports to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"), in its annual report to shareholders, in press releases, and other written materials, and in oral statements made by its officers, directors, or employees to third parties. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. A number of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statement, including but not limited to the following: Sea's goals and strategies; its future business development, financial condition, financial results, and results of operations; the growth in, and market size of, the digital entertainment, e-commerce and digital financial services industries in the region, including segments within those industries; changes in its revenue, costs or expenditures; its ability to continue to source, develop and offer new and attractive online games and to offer other engaging digital entertainment content; the growth of its digital entertainment, e-commerce and digital financial services businesses and platforms; the growth in its user base, level of user engagement, and monetization; its ability to continue to develop new technologies and/or upgrade its existing technologies; growth and trends of its markets and competition in its industries; government policies and regulations relating to its industries; and general economic and business conditions in the region.
Further information regarding these and other risks is included in Sea's filings with the SEC. All information provided in this press release and in the attachments is as of the date of this press release, and Sea undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statement, except as required under applicable law.
Company Snapshot |
||
Burnaby (Other Tech Sectors)
|
Other Recent Company News |
||||||||||
|