Technology

Posted on April 8, 2019 by staff

Revenues soar to €250.8m for Keywords Studios

Technology

An AIM-listed provider of technical services to the global video games industry has revealed a 66 per cent surge in group revenue in 2018.

Dublin-headquartered Keywords Studios posted a group revenue of €250.8m, up €151.4m in 2017.

It provides integrated art creation, software engineering, testing, localisation, audio and customer care services across more than 50 languages and 16 games platforms to a blue-chip client base across the globe.

Set up in 1998, it now has over 40 facilities in 20 countries across Asia, the Americas and Europe.

It provides its services to 23 of the top 25 most prominent games companies, including Activision Blizzard, Bandai Namco, Bethesda, Electronic Arts, and Sony.

Recent titles worked on include Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, Call of Duty: WWII, Mortal Kombat X, Assassin’s Creed Origins, Battlefield 1, League of Legends and Fortnite.

Its most profitable service in 2018 was functional testing, accounting for nearly 20 per cent of revenue, which provides discovery and documentation of game defects and testing to verify a game’s compliance with hardware manufacturers’ and app stores’ specifications.

Andrew Day, Chief Executive of Keywords Studios, hailed the results as “considerable progress.”

“We have started 2019 promisingly, and we are seeing good overall demand for our services across the Group.

“We are actively reviewing acquisitions from which we will continue to be selective, with many businesses excited about the strong platform Keywords could potentially provide for their services and people.

“This, combined with the likely increase in demand for content driven by the arrival of games subscription and streaming services from new entrants such as Apple and Google, give us confidence in the outcome for the full year.

“Our strengthened market leadership and breadth and scale of service offering enable us to take advantage of the multiple growth opportunities afforded by a market that continues to grow in size and sophistication.”

The news follows last year’s announcement that the company made two multimillion-pound acquisitions and revealed a 57 per cent surge in annual revenues.