Playtika buys mobile game dev Innplay Labs

Mobile game publisher Playtika announced it intends to buy game developer Innplay Labs for as much as $300 million. 

It marks the second acquisition for Playtika in the last few months, as it purchased Youda Games back in July for $165 million. That buy required a starting deposit of $89.4 million, and this one for Innplay will require a similar one at $80 million. 

Talking to VentureBeat, Playtika CEO Robert Antokol called the acquisition "another strategic expansion of our portfolio with a promising and innovative growth franchise." He views the Israel-based Innplay as a way into the "luck battle" genre of mobile games, due to the popularity of Innplay's Animals & Coins and Animal Kingdom.

This newest acquisition indicates Playtika is slowly getting back into the mobile market. Earlier in the year, it halted launching new mobile games after a "challenging" mobile market at the end of 2022. Beyond the aforementioned Youda purchase, the studio has been quiet for much of the year. 

At the start of 2023, Playtika attempted to purchase Angry Birds creator Rovio for the second time. As of this past August, Sega now owns the studio in an effort to have a stronger presence in the mobile game market.