Quepasa Buying Brazilian Social Game Developer For $4 Million

Continuing efforts to bolster its game offerings, Latino-focused online social network Quepasa acquired Brazilian firm XtFt Games and its social game studio TechFront for $4 million ($3.7 million in shares of Quepasa common stock and a $300,000 brokerage fee). Founded in 2006, XtFt is both a multiplatform developer (console, web, and mobile) and the owner of "substantially all the assets of TechFront." The TechFront studio claims to be the largest developer for all modern game platforms in Brazil, and began creating social games for the locally popular Orkut social platform last year. As part of the agreement, XtFt and TechFront's team of 41 full-time game developers will create "culturally relevant social gaming IP" for Quepasa's platform and other social networks in Latin America. Quepasa says it's now in a better posistion to capitalize on "the rapid growth and monetization of social games throughout Latin America". This acquisition follows several moves Quepasa's made recently to expand its game catalog, including a deal announced in January to publish and promote five titles from eGames, all of which were originally developed by TechFront. It also partnered with Viximo last March to bring that company's social games to its users. Though not as popular in the U.S., Quepasa saw tremendous growth in 2010, increasing its user count by 255 percent to now 27.2 million registered users. In December 2010 alone, the site added 2.2 million users and 16.4 million unique visits (compared to 1.2 million new users and 7.1 million unique visits in December 2009). "The addition of TechFront's talented team provides Quepasa with the means to offer and monetize culturally relevant social games to our Quepasa.com member base and other audience networks, like Orkut and Facebook, and eventually to mobile users across Latin America," says Quepasa CEO John C. Abbott. Abbots continues, "As both a publisher of social games and a social network, Quepasa will command a greater proportion of the revenues associated with social games on its own platform, while also participating in additional revenues generated on alternative social networks."