Keywords Studios, the Irish video gaming services provider listed on the London Stock Exchange, has acquired a US counterpart in a deal worth up to $10 million (£7.44m).
Founded by Lev Chapelsky in 2001, Blindlight provides Hollywood production services for the video games industry.
The company works on behalf of game publishers and developers in procuring specialised talent and managing the entire production processes for the parts of games that benefit from Hollywood production resources.
“Keywords and Blindlight have got to know each other well over the past three years and we see good opportunities to leverage both businesses to offer a wider range of world leading services to our clients,” said Keywords Studios chief executive Andrew Day.
“We are delighted to welcome Lev and the rest of the team to the Keywords family.”
Blindlight works with top game producers around the world (including Bethesda, NCSoft, Sony Interactive Entertainment and Ubisoft) making the creative expertise of Hollywood readily available for the video games industry.
Blindlight achieved average earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) of $1 million per annum over the three-year period to 31 December 2017.
Under the terms of the deal, Keywords is paying an initial $3.64m in cash and will issue 64,521 new shares to the seller.
A deferred sum of up to $4.8 million will be paid out in the 12-month periods to the first and second anniversaries of the acquisition – but these will depend on the company’s performance.
Andrew Day added: “Following our recent acquisition of music services companies, Cord Worldwide and Laced, we see excellent opportunities for Blindlight to bring these services to Los Angeles, as well as providing access to further opportunities for our downstream production services of translation and localised voice over.”