Animoca Brands acquires The Sandbox dev Pixowl for $4.9 million

Newsbrief: Animoca Brands has scooped up the mobile developer Pixowl for the sum of roughly $4.9 million, split between shares and cash.

All in all, the cash portion of the sale only represents a little over $519,000 with the rest of the purchase price to be paid in Animoca Brands shares, according to VentureBeat.

Pixowl itself has created a number of licensed games in the past, including the likes of Goosebumps Horror Town and Peanuts: Snoopy’s Town Tale, but The Sandbox is currently the studio’s flagship title. 

The 2D world-creation mobile game also offers its players a platform to make and distribute their own in-game creations, and has received 40 million downloads since 2012 and currently boasts a million plus active players. The company is also eyeing a blockchain-based version of The Sandbox as well.

Animoca Brands itself has worked with mobile developers and games before, but notably sold off its entire catalog of 318 casual mobile games for $3.8 million in a deal with iCandy late last year, saying at the time that the move would allow it to move away from casual mobile games and more toward VR and what it described as "core" games.