Press Release: The Swedish Firm Starbreeze AB, an independent creator publisher and distributor of high quality entertainment products, announced on June 30th its acquisition of the French toys to life, VR and augmented reality tech company ePawn for a total consideration of 4 MEUR (approximately 37.8 MSEK) in Starbreeze B-shares and 1.5 MEUR (approximately 14.2 MSEK) in cash.
“With ePawn, we will significantly diversify our virtual reality and toys-to-life offerings, as well as speed up the development of existing internal projects already in the works,” said Bo Andersson Klint, Starbreeze CEO. “The ePawn team has already innovated and productified their technologies and we acquire not only many good ways of applying them, but also a solid portfolio of patents that will benefit Starbreeze for many years to come.”
ePawn is a next generation VR and toys-to-life company merging real life gaming experiences with their digital counter part through its gaming boards and mats in table and room scale sizes. ePawn’s patented technology captures everything that happens on the game board and feeds digital applications with information.
With the acquisition comes seven registered patents and nine staff located in Paris, France. An additional earn-out consideration will be paid to the selling shareholders based on performance of the business in the coming years. The acquisition is not expected to significantly impact Starbreeze financial performance in near-term but is expected to unlock synergies related to several of Starbreeze ongoing and future projects and thereby generate incremental revenues long-term.
About Starbreeze:
Starbreeze is an independent creator, publisher and distributor of high quality entertainment products. With studios in Stockholm, Paris and Los Angeles, the company creates games and other virtual reality entertainment products, based on proprietary design and licensed content. Starbreeze’s most recent games include PAYDAY 2, the adrenaline fueled bank robbing co-op game and the upcoming John Wick VR shooter and survival co-op FPS OVERKILL’s The Walking Dead.
Sean Earley is the Executive Editor of AR/VR Magazine & co-founder of RobotSpaceship Podcast Network. He is the Director of New Biz Development and Publishing at KEMWEB, a musician, producer & consultant. He loves guitars, VR and coffee.
