Chinese company iDreamSky, best known for localizing Western games for China, has spent $10 million to acquire a majority stake in California-based free-to-play game studio Rumble Entertainment.
Industry watchers may remember that Rumble is the startup founded by BioWare, EA and Zynga veterans in 2011.
By 2013 it had raised roughly $35 million in funding, and this latest investment from iDreamSky (which went public last year and turned its eye towards Western acquisitions) suggests that it will be shifting its focus to the burgeoning Chinese market as it seeks to compete with established F2P titans in the mobile marketplaces.
"In learning free-to-play, we made a lot of mistakes and learned a lot," Rumble founder (and former BioWare/Pandemic CEO) Greg Richardson told GamesBeat. "In terms of financial success, our biggest impediment is not having enough marketing money. Our competitors can spend more than $10 million a month on marketing, but we could not spend anywhere near that.”
The studio is best known for its cross-platform F2P game KingsRoad, and as part of this new financial deal iDreamSky gains the exclusive right to publish the game in China.