Nexon Buys Gloops for $486 Million in Cash to Push Into Mobile Gaming

Nexon, a Tokyo-based games company that raised $1.2 billion the day before Zynga went public, continues using that cash to make acquisitions.

MapleStory

Today, it has acquired Gloops, a mobile game developer also based in Japan, for $486 million in cash. Gloops, which is known for the titles JapanPro Baseball Card Battle and Warriors of Odin, reported a profit of $38.5 million on revenues of $305 million for the year ended June 30.

Nexon, a distributor of MapleStory and other free-to-play games online, has experimented with both Facebook and mobile gaming, but this acquisition will help it push into mobile even more.

Gloops is currently expanding from Asia into the U.S. and Europe with the release of five titles this year and another five in 2013 through a partnership with DeNA’s social games platform. DeNA is pledging to help Gloops — and other game companies it works with — get users and distribute the game internationally.

This summer, Nexon bought a $685 million stake in NCsoft, a South Korean maker of online games, including Lineage and Guild Wars. Nexon was also rumored to be sniffing around Bellevue, Wash.-based Valve, an online distribution platform, and while that jibed with Nexon’s aggressive acquisitiveness, the rumors were subsequently shot down by Valve.

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