iWin said today it has agreed to acquire Jenkat Games, a free PC downloadable casual game website.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Jenkat Games Arcade has been installed more than 10 million times, and the site has reached more than 8 million unique users in the past 12 months. The deal shows that acquisitions are still a hot strategy in the games industry. Market advisor Digi-Capital reported that exits in 2014 for game companies exceeded $24 billion.
[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":1756526,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"games,","session":"B"}']San Francisco-based iWin itself has now made three acquisitions in the past two years. iWin started out in PC downloadable games distribution and monetization, and it has since expanded into HTML5 games, which can run on any device that has an HTML5-compatible web browser. iWin’s HTML5 catalog now has more than 250 games.
iWin has also created 15 original games in the past six months, including Jewel Quest, Deal or No Deal, and Bubble Town. Jenkat Games adds a large installed base and more monthly unique users, giving iWin another channel to engage with passionate gamers. Jenkat currently reaches 500,000 monthly unique users.
iWin manages the PC download service for Yahoo, MSN, and Pogo along with iWin’s owned sites which include iWin.com, Iplay.com, and Download-Free-Games.com. With the addition of Jenkat Games, iWin’s reach now exceeds 4 million monthly active gamers.
CJ Wolf, chief executive of iWin, said in a statement that iWin and Jenkat have been partners since 2007, and he has been impressed with how big Jenkat has grown with limited resources and capital. He said he is confident that the companies can grow that further by introducing Jenkat’s players to iWin’s games. Jenkat had three employees.
“iWin viewed this as a cost-effective customer acquisition strategy,” Wolf said in an email. “iWin believes that our game solution can do a better job of monetizing that player base.”
Malcolm Michaels, CEO of Jenkat Games in Lake Elmo, Minn., said that his company could not have found a better home, since Jenkat’s fans will have access to even more games now.