Social app developer RockYou has acquired Playdemic, an England-based social gaming company, in order to boost its efforts to build more social games. Terms of the deal were not announced.
Playdemic is a 16-person social gaming firm with just one known game, Gourmet Ranch, a cooking/farming simulation game for Facebook. The game has around half a million monthly active users, far less than competitors like Zynga's FarmVille or Playfish's Pet Society. The company now has 170 employees, including today's acquisition.
RockYou COO Lisa Marino tells us that the company will be investing in growing Gourmet Ranch's user base through its pre-existing advertising network. RockYou not only develops games, but it also has a social application advertising platform that can help it drive new users to its new game properties.
Playdemic will be run as an independent unit of the company, primarily responsible for helping the company build more social games. Last month, RockYou acquired TirNua for its 3-D game engine.
While RockYou has been around longer than Zynga, Playfish and the other social gaming giants, it completely missed the boat on social gaming. The result has been stagnated growth and significant layoffs while its rivals grow into multi-billion dollar businesses.
Despite raising more than $100 million from investors like Softbank, Sequoia Capital and First Round Capital, the company is struggling to stay relevant in an era where the popularity of social widgets has waned. Profitability still eludes RockYou, but social gaming has proven itself to be a massive moneymaker. "We're very committed to creating an organization that can make money and stand on its own," Marino told us.
RockYou is the developer of classic Facebook applications like Super Wall, Hug Me, Birthdays and MyGifts, but now focuses its energy on games like Zoo World and Toyland. Zoo World is the company's most popular game, with 8.9 million monthly active users.