Small Giant Games

Small Giant Games was founded in 2013 in Helsinki, Finland by a group of individuals laid off by mobile game developer Sulake.[1] Otto Nieminen, formerly Sulake's product development officer, was the company's founding chief executive officer, with Timo Soininen, former CEO of Sulake, assuming the CEO role at Small Giant in 2014.[1][2] Ex-Sulake chief technology officer Markus Halttunen joined Small Giant in the same position. Developers Ilkka Juopperi and Tommi Vallisto rounded out the Small Giant staff.[1]

By October 2013, Small Giant had raised $750,000 in seed money.[3] Later that year, the company completed a fundraising campaign that generated USD 3.1 million to allow them to launch their first mobile game, OddWings Escape.[4] The game launched on May 14, 2015.[5] In his review for Pocket Gamer, Harry Slater described the game: "Oddwings Escape is a game about genetically modified mutant ducks flying through lovely looking backdrops. You have to collect hearts and coins, avoid bombs, and get as far as you can."[6] OddWings Escape was downloaded over 1 million times in the week following its launch.[5] The game's early success was credited, in part, to its having been translated into 15 different languages at launch, giving it broader international appeal.[5]

Small Giant's second game, Rope Racers, involved racing through levels against ghost characters by swinging from a rope that could be projected from the player's character.[7]

Following OddWings Escape and Rope Racers, Soininen described a change in Small Giant's focus away from casual games: "we decided to kill those products pretty quickly and start looking for the big one. How could we really get that top-50 grossing game? What does it take?"[8] EQT Ventures provided Small Giant with EUR 5.4 million in venture capital in 2017 for marketing and game development.[9] In March 2017, Small Giant launched, Empires and Puzzles, a match-three puzzle game that also incorporates elements of role-playing games.[10] By the end of the year, Small Giant reported that Empires and Puzzles had generated USD 33 million in revenue.[10] The game won the Game of the Year award at the 2017 Finnish Game Awards in 2017.[11]

EQT Ventures invested an additional USD 41 million in Small Giant Games in January 2018 to assist with scaling the game to a larger audience.[10] Only four months into the year, Empires and Puzzles exceeded its revenue generation for 2017.[10] By the end of 2018, it had been downloaded 26 million times from the Google Play Store and Apple App Store.[10] Empires and Puzzles won the award for "Best Breakthrough Hit" in the 2018 Google Play Awards; Small Giant was a nominee for Best Live Ops and Best Developer at the Pocket Gamer Mobile Games Awards in 2019.[12]

In December 2018, Zynga announced that it had reached an agreement to purchase Small Giant Games.[13] Zynga purchased 80% of the company initially for USD 330 million in cash and USD 230 million in Zynga unregistered common stock.[13] The terms for purchasing the remaining portion of the company will be set based on its performance over the three years following the initial acquisition.[13]

Empires and Puzzles continued to perform well for Small Giant and Zynga. In October 2019, the game reached USD 500 million in lifetime revenue and reached 41 million downloads.[14] In May 2020, Zynga paid the first of three installments for the remaining 20 percent of the company, transferring $122 million to Small Giant after Zynga posted $404 million in revenue for the first quarter of 2020, a 52% increase.[15]

Small Giant soft launched its next game, Puzzle Combat, on March 8, 2019. The game shares many gameplay elements with Empires and Puzzles, but it features a modern warfare setting.[12]