Bigpoint acquired by Chinese games giant Youzu

Online games giant Bigpoint has been acquired by Chinese games specialist Youzu Interactive.

The deal will go through in April, subject to Chinese acquisition processes.

Bigpoint is a specialist in free-to-play online and mobile games with offices around the world (including its native Hamburg, Lyon, Istanbul, San Francisco, Berlin and Malta). In 2012 it ran into financial challenges and made over 120 redundancies, but has since recovered.

Its next game is Hocus Puzzle, that has a marketing budget of 23m.

Meanwhile Youzu is a relatively new games company that specialists in Chinese MMOs and mobile titles. Its products include League of Angels, Knight’s Fable and Magerealm.

The news follows the proposed buy-out of another European online games company, Jagex, from a Chinese mining company Shandong Honda.

With this collaboration, Bigpoint begins the next chapter in its history focused exclusively on the quality of titles published,” said Bigpoint CEO Khaled Helioui.

With the support of Youzu, we will be able to further invest in our talent, the amazing experiences they create and the reach of our games.” He continued, Lin Qi’s passion and vision for the industry resonated with our hunger to provide better experiences to our players. Partnering with a player centric, product focused organisation such as Youzu will allow us to have the means of our ambition: Great gaming for everybody.”