Finland's Star Arcade completes a management buyout with help from Gameforge founder (exclusive)

Another game studio from the land of mobile gaming hits like Clash of Clans and Angry Birds is making news.

Star Arcade of Helsinki is announcing today that its management team has acquired a majority stake in the company and raised new investment from serial game entrepreneur Klaas Kersting.

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Harri Myllyla, Jonne Castren, and Remco Smit led the management buyout with assistance from Kersting, who is the head of Flaregames. Kersting also founded Gameforge and was an early stage investor in Finland’s Supercell, the maker of the hit Clash of Clans and HayDay mobile games.

Star Arcade isn’t quite famous yet. But it has developed a platform for synchronous multiplayer gaming, a task that is difficult to do because of the weaker hardware and network lag associated with mobile devices. Star Arcade enables real-time gameplay between friends on all major mobile platforms as well as Facebook on the Web.

“I am impressed with the Star Arcade management team,” Kersting said in a statement. “They have won me over with their dedication, their excellence and their concise vision of the future of multiplayer gaming. They have a number of great products in the pipeline and I am very much looking forward to see those perform on the market.”

“We are very happy to welcome Klaas Kersting as an investor. We are in the process of launching our latest game this year that will enable synchronous multiplayer gaming experiences across any device, network and location,” said Myllyla, the CEO of Star Arcade, in a statement. “Star Arcade is providing multiplayer games that work on tablets, phones, PC´s and browsers regardless of the network or the country where the consumer is located in. With support from our new investors, we want to further expand our global reach and strengthen our commitment to release high performing real-time multiplayer games.”

Reinout te Brake, a serial game entrepreneur and investor in the Netherlands, has joined Star Arcade as an adviser. Myllyla said that the company will unveil a new game in the coming weeks. As many as eight players will be able to play in real time against each other on mobile devices.

The company was founded in 2010, and it has 20 employees. Investors include Kersting, other angels, the Finnish government’s Tekes funding organization, and Finnvera. Star Arcade has raised about a million euros to date.