Playdom acquires Acclaim Games

If there was any doubt that the world of Facebook social games and traditional MMOs are becoming further intertwined, this should hopefully silence it. Playdom, well-known as one of the three major powers in Facebook gaming (alongside Zynga and Playfish), has acquired Acclaim Games, owner of several free-to-play MMOs including Chronicles of Spellborn, 9Dragons, and 2Moons. Unfortunately for the business mavens in the audience, the exact details of the acquisition including price were not disclosed.

In terms of management, there's going to be little changing on the ground for Acclaim Games, as previous CEO Howard Marks will continue to run the studio for Playdom. Playdom itself has been purchasing several smaller developers and studios, especially those focusing on Facebook development. No word on whether this will affect management of any of Acclaim's existing games, although it seems unlikely given the circumstances. What is certain is that it's another installment in the distance between social gaming and MMOs being shortened.

[ Thanks to Animagnum for the tip! ]

Reader Comments (11)

I really hope this is good news for Spellborn.

Yeah that game needs some loving care and it will be as good as gold. Iron out the bugs, balance issues, and toss on some endgame! I love Spellborn and have been eagerly awaiting it's return.

They have a few great games, bots and spellborn (I like 2moons too, but mostly because playing with a healer using an energy whip is fun). Let's hope they get more care now.

Ironic that you mention Bots, I'm assuming that you don't know that the game is no more (or at least officially going to be no more soon, the servers were down for over a month without any announcements, and there hasn't been any news posted in updates for the past year).

Unless for some reason the new company buying them wants to save Bots, it was just getting shut down.

Acclaim isn't much but a name anymore that has rights to a few games and rights to the names of some others. They have been this ghostly memory of a company for some time, maybe some new wind will be blown into them now.

Well I was aware that both bots and spellborn have development problems (last time I checked, bots development was halted and the game was dying, the servers were still there though), so that is why I mentioned both of them as "hopefully getting more care". Too bad, since if the servers are down I guess its almost over - and the game was quite a lot of fun back when I played it.

It's only a matter of time before the first FB/Social based MMORPG rolls out...it's going to fun to see who beats who to the punch.

One thing is for sure, for better or worse, it's going to change the face of MMO's.

Didn't city of eternals already do this?

I would agree with Quantize, City of Eternals is pretty damn close to an MMORPG as you can get with a FB game.

Acclaim made some mistakes with their in game ads in 9Dragons
a lot of players complained for months about them. But too little to late when
players left is when they decided to take the ads out. Spellborn could haven been
a good game but it just didn't grab me.

Would be nice to see Spellborn revived, maybe this is why things were so quiet over there. :/

I really hope this is good news for Spellborn. That game deserved much better - it's one of the most underestimated MMORPGs out there, along with Ryzom.

It's high time someone showed some love to Spellborn.

Here's an amazing video showcasing Spellborn zones:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAACWjYvQ8k

Playdom acquires Acclaim Games

Reader Comments (11)

Posted: May 19th 2010 9:41PM VampireCactus said

Posted: May 19th 2010 9:49PM Distaste said

Posted: May 20th 2010 12:48AM kasapina said

Posted: May 20th 2010 1:38AM MewmewGrrl said

Posted: May 26th 2010 2:01PM kasapina said

Posted: May 20th 2010 1:06AM (Unverified) said

Posted: May 20th 2010 3:22AM (Unverified) said

Posted: May 20th 2010 4:28AM whateveryousay said

Posted: May 20th 2010 8:07AM BubleFett said

Posted: May 20th 2010 11:57AM Cendres said

Posted: May 25th 2010 5:28PM (Unverified) said

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