Pokie developer Aristocrat has recently acquired Israel-based Plarium, a social gaming company specialising in MMOs and strategy games. While Aristocrat has been around in the gaming market for over 50 years, the company remains a forward-thinking and innovative force.
Aristocrat is always working hard to provide players with exciting new gaming experiences that cater to the needs of both modern and traditional players – and its latest move does just that. Recently, famed pokie developer Aristocrat purchased Plarium, a social gaming company based in Israel. Founded in 2009, the company has made a name for itself in the social gaming market with 9 great titles.
These include various MMO games optimised for mobile devices, and the full range includes:
- Throne: Kingdom of War
- Vikings: War of Clans
- Soldiers Inc
- Pirates: Tides of Fortune
- Sparta: War of Empires
- Total Domination
- Stormfall: Age of War
- Terminator: Future War
- Nords: Heroes of the North
Each of these games sets players an exciting journey to lead armies to success. Whether they’re in the middle ages, space or on the high seas, Plarium’s Games immerse players in new worlds that allow them to mine resources and build civilizations. This is quite a new concept for Aristocrat, which specialised in the creation of mobile, online and land-based pokies.
So, working with a unique social games developer will certainly add a distinctive touch to Aristocrat’s business and will certainly set the company apart from its competitors. "The acquisition of Plarium allows Aristocrat to expand our addressable market into logical adjacent segments in the fast growing mobile social gaming market”, says Aristocrat CEO Tim Croker.
“This immediately expands our addressable market from US$3.2 billion in the Social Casino segment, to US$25.4 billion when including the Strategy, Casual and RPG segments”. The deal between the two companies will be completed by the end of 2017.
Avraham Shalel, CEO of Plarium, will remain the head of the company even after the acquisition; however, he and 12 other executives at Plarium have decided to defer parts of the payment until 2020. This is an exciting partnership that is sure to create a buzz in the online gaming market. While plenty of pokie developers have partnered with social games companies, we’ve not yet seen them work with strategic and MMO titles.
We are certainly excited to see where this will take the online pokie market in the future.