“Gaea is buying our legacy first-generation mobile games and publishing business. This is a continuation of our strategy of fewer, bigger, bolder games. The market will continue to get bigger for the top mobile games.”
- Kabam COO Kent Wakeford
San Francisco-based mobile studio Kabam has sold off a slate of its older titles -- some of which have been hugely successful in years past -- to Chinese publisher Gaea Mobile.
The package includes Kingdoms of Camelot: Battle for the North, The Hobbit: Kingdoms of Middle-earth, Dragons of Atlantis: Heirs of the Dragon, and a number of the company's third party-developed titles.
These are not new games; Battle for the North launched in 2012. It and The Hobbit had at one time been the company's top-grossing games.
Kabam COO Kent Wakeford explains his thinking in an interview with VentureBeat on the news:
“From a management perspective, we don’t want to split our focus. We don’t think that is the way to really succeed. We want to put the smartest people on the biggest opportunities. Supercell is a great example. It’s about being able to create franchises that last years and years.”
The company plans to focus on hits like its current success, Marvel Contest of Champions.
The studio secured a massive $120 million investment from Chinese internet giant Alibaba in 2014, and its CEO, Kevin Chou, said he hopes use that investment to aim at the massive Chinese mobile market in the future -- a sentiment echoed by Wakeford last year. Chou later wrote that he hopes to develop a game that generates $1 billion a year.
This isn't the first time Kabam has sold off games in its library; in 2014, it offloaded its legacy social game business on RockYou, which specializes in picking up games other publishers no longer wish to operate.