Australian casino firm Aristocrat has closed an all-cash $990 million acquisition deal for Big Fish Games, a company based in Seattle known for developing casual games on PC and mobile devices.
As reported by Pocket Gamer, the deal was announced back in November 2017 but was finally closed on January 9th. This is the second time Big Fish has been bought in three years, as they were acquired by Churchill Downs in 2014 for $885 million.
“The strategic and financial benefits of this acquisition are highly compelling,” said Aristocrat CEO Trevor Croker in a statement to Reuters. “Big Fish’s digital-first social casino content and industry leading meta-game capability and applications are highly complementary to Aristocrat’s existing and industry-leading land based digital content business.”
This is Aristocrat’s second major games acquisition in a short amount of time, having spent $500 million in August 2017 to buy Israeli free-to-play developer Plarium.