Kabam scores big with highest-grossing game on App Store for 2012

Kabam made a name for itself as a maker of hardcore social games on Facebook, but it made an even bigger splash with its first game on the Apple iTunes App Store. Kingdoms of Camelot: Battle for the North placed first on Apple’s list of the highest-grossing apps for 2012.

San Francisco-based Kabam’s first mobile game helped the company grow its revenue more than 60 percent in 2012. The company didn’t say exactly what those revenues will be, but it noted that its 2011 revenue was higher than $100 million. Those are big numbers for a company that was a Facebook-only maker of social games a few years ago. Now, more than 70 percent of revenues come from non-Facebook platforms such as the web and mobile.

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Kabam has hit the mark with gamers with its core strategy games, where players can band together in 100-person clans and attack enemies all at the same time. The players each build up their cities and armies and then start attacking others. Kabam has successfully reskinned this game numerous times, and the Battle for the North title, launched in March, is a successful reskin of Kingdoms of Camelot, which released in 2009 on Facebook. Since April, the medieval-empire strategy game has been one of the highest-grossing apps on iOS in more than 50 countries.

Earlier this month, Kabam had three games ranked in the top 25 grossing apps lists for both iOS and Android.

“With more than 700,000 applications in the Apple Store, it’s phenomenal that Kabam’s Kingdoms of Camelot: Battle for the North is number one,” said Kabam chief operating officer Chris Carvalho. “Having three Kabam games in the top 25 grossing apps on both iOS and Android this month is another amazing feat.”

Kabam is headed by chief executive Kevin Chou (pictured) and has 580 employees, up 40 percent from a year ago.