My Little Pony house Hasbro has made a major investment in Backflip Studios, the Boulder, CO mobile developer behind the hit game
DragonVale and other titles.
Hasbro said it paid $112 million in an all-cash transaction to Backflip for 70 percent of the company.
Hasbro said the buy helps get its foot further in the door of the mobile game market. The company has already been making moves into mobile: The company already has mobile game partnerships with publishers including DeNA and Electronic Arts.
Backflip's Julian Farrior, Dale Thoms, and Tom Blind led Backflip to rapid growth after founding the company in 2009. The free-to-play game
DragonVale is its most popular title, and other games such as
NinJump and
Paper Toss have helped drive 300 million downloads across the studio’s entire portfolio.
The management trio will continue to run the company out of Boulder, Hasbro said in a statement.
The studio will continue to develop its own properties, as well as develop mobile games that use Hasbro’s popular brands, which include Transformers and My Little Pony.
