Playdom acquires Offbeat Creations

M&A's heating up in the social gaming space

Playdom, a major player in the social gaming space, announced on Wednesday it has acquired Offbeat Creations, a developer of social games for Facebook.  The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Offbeat Creations is known for games like Super Farkle, a popular dice game which sports over one million monthly active users.  Other games it owns include, Be a Tycoon, Chug It, Food Fling, Hug it Out and Water Balloon Fight.  The Bellevue, Wa.- based startup was founded in 2008 by Chia Chin Lee, Robert Reichner and Tom Fakes.  

The acquisition is most likely a move for Playdom to gain more users and grow its network of games.  At the moment, Playdom has an impressive lineup of Facebook and MySpace games which include Mobsters 2, Sorority Life, Lil Farm life, Poker Palace and several others.  The company's games have been installed over 90 million times on these social gaming platforms.  

"We have aggressive plans to expand our social gaming footprint in 2010 and the addition of Offbeat Creations will significantly enhance our development throughput and expand Playdom's game pipeline this year," said John Pleasants, CEO of Playdom.  

Playdom, which has raised about $43 million to date, plans to bring aboard Offbeat's existing 12 game designers alongside it's own 15-person Seattle, Washington studio.

Chia Chin Lee, co-founder of Offbeat commented, "We believe that together we can create the best possible games and player experiences."

The addition of Offbeat to Playdom will only help grow its network in a much needed time when social gaming giant, Zynga is dominating the market.  Zynga has an estimated 75 million monthly active users on its Farmville game alone, while Playdom has around 20 million monthly users across its entire network, according to stats from its Website.

With giants like Zynga and Playdom loaded in venture capital, the social gaming merger and acquistion space should start heating up.  Zynga recently made an acquistion of social gaming company, Serious Business, which reached one million daily active users on its 'Friends for Sale' game.  Obviously, with terms of transactions not being disclosed in either of these acquisitions, it's probably safe to assume they were bargains and we should expect to see plenty more as these giants continue to dominate the market.