Ex-EA Playfish vets open social casino game studio with $2.8M

A group of veterans from Electronic Arts' Playfish studio have opened a start-up in London called Plumbee, specializing in the burgeoning social casino game market. EA Playfish has lost a number of Playfish veterans in recent years, including general manager and vice president John Earner to a VC firm (he's also on Plumbee's advisory board), common technology lead Dan Borthwick to NaturalMotion Games, and co-founders Sami Lababidi and Sebastien de Halleux. Raf Keustermans served as global marketing director at the company, but he left Playfish in 2010 to co-found Plumbee and become its CEO. He's joined by COO Gerald Tan, who was a producer at Playfish before leaving last May; and CTO Jodi Moran, formerly senior director of technology at the EA studio. Plumbee, which employs 20 workers, will focus on social casino game, which has seen a lot of activity lately from companies like Zynga, EA/PopCap Games, Caesars Interactive, Big Fish Games, and virtual gambling game firm IGT -- the latter three have made big acquisitions to enter the space. The studio has already released its first title, Mirrorball Slots, on Facebook. It was able to fund the title thanks to $2.8 million in financing from Idinvest Partners. Along with those announcements, Plumbee revealed that it has a long-term partnership with Stockholm-based casino game developer Quickspin AB.