Ireland’s Keywords Studios, the technical and creative services provider to the video games industry, is to acquire US game development services provider High Voltage for a total consideration of up to $50m.
The acquisition is part of a wider strategy to become the ‘go to’ technical and creative services platform for the global video games industry. It follows the acquired of Gateshead-based game dev firm Coconut Lizard in July of this year.
Founded in 1993 by majority shareholder Kerry Ganofsky, who will continue leading the studio within Keywords Studios, High Voltage is an end-to-end, full-service, AAA game developer based near Chicago, Illinois, with a subsidiary studio in New Orleans, Louisiana.
HVS counts major game franchises such as Fortnite, Saints Row, Mortal Kombat, Hunter the Reckoning, The Conduit, and Lego Racers amongst its credits.
Ganofsky said: “We are overjoyed to join an industry-leading global group such as Keywords Studios. We are tremendously excited they share our vision for augmenting our development capabilities and they will provide us the ability to embark upon a growth trajectory for our business creating the next generation of AAA games.
“Furthermore, Keywords Studios’ investment in our studio is an outstanding sign for the continued expansion of game development in Illinois and Louisiana.
“We genuinely look forward to working together with everyone at Keywords Studios and fulfilling a noteworthy role in this new journey with them.”
Andrew Day, CEO of Keywords Studios added: “With its 27-year pedigree of game development in the global video games market, High Voltage brings incredible experience, expertise and additional scale to our fast growing Game Development Service Line.
“The multitalented team at HVS brings deep expertise in the Unreal Game Engine development environment, honed particularly well in recent years through working closely with Epic Games on Fortnite, as well as a track record of having worked with many client proprietary game engines, gaming platforms and game genres, which all adds further breadth and depth to Keywords Studios’ existing capabilities.”
Video games