Rovio Entertainment, the studio founded in Finland and responsible for the "Angry Birds" games, has agreed to be acquired by Japanese video game giant Sega. Sega Sammy Holdings will pay $776 million (€706 million/£625 million) for the acquisition, which will include all of Rovio's eight studios worldwide. The company is being acquired to "strengthen its position" in mobile gaming, which has always been Rovio's focus.

Rovio is known as the Angry Birds studio because it has not produced another hit of the same scale. Titles such as "The Croods," "Nibblers," and "Retry" have had some reasonable success since then, but nothing like Angry Birds. Angry Birds was released as a paid app in 2009, and within six months of its release it became a word-of-mouth viral smash, eventually reaching #1 in the App Store; by mid-2012 it had been downloaded over one billion times (a milestone that Rovio (it claims to be the first game to reach such a milestone).

Rovio has released dozens of Angry Birds games, including direct sequels and the likes of Angry Birds Star Wars, and two Angry Birds movies. The company went public in 2017 at a valuation of about $1 billion, and the low price paid by Sega arguably reflects its inability to achieve new success on its own (even if Angry Birds remains very popular and profitable on its own). Still, Sega expects the mobile market to be worth $263.3 billion by 2026, accounting for 56% of the total gaming industry. [Harunori Satomi, CEO of Sega Sammy Group (opens in new tab), said, "Among the rapidly growing global gaming markets, the mobile gaming market has particularly high potential, and it has been Sega's long-term goal to accelerate our business expansion in this area."

"I am happy to announce this deal with Rovio, which owns the globally loved Angry Birds and has many talented employees who support its industry-leading mobile game development and operations capabilities."

"I grew up playing 'Sonic the Hedgehog' and was fascinated by its cutting-edge design," added Alexandre Pelletier-Norman, CEO of Rovio. Later, when I played Angry Birds for the first time, I saw how games had evolved into a true mainstream phenomenon and a force in shaping modern culture." [It's] an honor to join Rovio and to see Angry Birds continue to grow as we release new games, series and movies. Less well known, but equally impressive, is Beacon, a proprietary, industry-leading technology platform with 20 years of expertise that allows the tight-knit team to develop world-class GaaS products."

Pelletier-Normand described Angry Birds' main characters, Red and Sonic the Hedgehog, as "two globally recognized and iconic characters with a global reach by two extremely complementary companies that are He concludes by comparing them to "being created. I don't know if I necessarily agree, but I have no doubt that Sonic will soon be transformed into Lobotnik on cell phones.

Rovio's board of directors has approved the deal, with a purchase price of €9.25 per share for the entire company and €1.48 per share for options.