Kabam teams with State of Decay studio to create Pokémon-esque mobile game

Fresh from its $120 million venture round, mobile game publisher Kabam is teaming up with Seattle developer Undead Labs to create Moonrise, a new role-playing game for mobile devices.

San Francisco-based Kabam may likely publish more games like this one now that it has raised money from China’s Alibaba Group. Kabam chief executive Kevin Chou said at the ChinaJoy conference that Kabam’s value has topped $1 billion and that the company is seeking to take Western games to Asia — and vice-versa.

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Undead Labs released the acclaimed State of Decay, a zombie survival-fantasy game, in 2013, and it became a million-copy seller. Moonrise, which features Pokémon-esque critters, debuts at the Aug. 29 at the PAX Prime convention in Seattle.

“We are thrilled to partner with Undead Labs. They are a veteran team that has worked on some of the greatest game franchises of all time,” said Aaron Loeb, senior vice president of Kabam’s North American Studios. “Their new creation, Moonrise, will bring a truly next generation mobile experience to gamers around the world.”

Kabam has games like Kingdom of Camelot, Dragons of Atlantis, and The Hobbit: Kingdoms of Middle-earth. Each of those has generated more than $100 million in revenue, and Chou said the company plans to make more than $500 million in revenue in 2014.

Undead Labs was founded in 2009 by industry veteran Jeff Strain, whose careers includes work at Blizzard Entertainment programming for StarCraft and Diablo as well as forming the team that kicked off development of World of Warcraft. Strain also cofounded ArenaNet, where he was programmer and executive producer for the Guild Wars franchise, which went on to sell more than six million copies over two games.

“We’re a gamer-focused studio with a great console pedigree,” said Strain. “And Kabam is a world-class publisher focused on delivering console-quality games on mobile devices. It’s a perfect match.”