Australian company Aristocrat Leisure has agreed to sell its Israeli mobile game development studio Plarium for about $820 million to Modern Times. What is being said about this agreement in Plarium, which has three offices in Ukraine, where more than 700 employees work.
Australian company Aristocrat Leisure has agreed to sell its Israeli mobile game development studio Plarium for about $820 million to Modern Times. What is being said about this agreement in Plarium, which has three offices in Ukraine, where more than 700 employees work.
Modern Times will pay $620 million immediately and another $200 million if certain financial indicators are reached from 2025 to 2028, according to Reuters. The deal should increase the buyer’s proceeds to $1.1 billion.
Plarium Global, known for the mobile game RAID: Shadow Legends, fits well into the structure of Modern Times, the latter’s press service said. Combined, RAID: Shadow Legends, Mech Arena and 18 other Plarium titles have more than 500 million players worldwide, according to the studio.
«The Ukrainian team played an important role in these achievements, developing flagship products», — the press service of Plarium’s head office told Forbes Ukraine.
At this time, the sale agreement does not affect the operation of Plarium. «Development of games continues as planned,» — the press service answered, but did not comment on the question of possible operational changes in the Ukrainian office after the completion of the agreement between Aristocrat Leisure and MTG.
Since May 2022, the staff of the studio in Ukraine has gradually decreased by almost 33%. In February 2024, it was reported that layoffs had taken place at Plarium. The reason was some unnamed changes in Pixel United, which includes Plarium. As a result, there have been cuts in global product teams.
We will remind that in 2022 Plarium liquidated its business in Russia and closed its office in Krasnodar. About 500 developers worked there, some of whom were fired, and some were relocated to another country.
