This article was published on November 14, 2012

French Web/mobile games startup Adictiz lands $2.5m to expand and play the global market


French Web/mobile games startup Adictiz lands $2.5m to expand and play the global market

Casual gaming has developed into a billion dollar market and France-based mobile and social games startup Adictiz has closed a $2.5 million (€2 million) round of funding which it hopes will help it grab a share of the hugely lucrative global industry.

The round, Adictiz’s first outside investment, is led by French private equity firm Omnes Capital (formerly Crédit Agricole) and will be used to strengthen both the consumer-facing games business — the 3-year-old company has served more than 30 million gamers to date — and its B2B arm, which develops branded titles for the Web and mobile.

The Lille-based company’s games catalogue — which includes iOS and Android games ‘Space Dog‘, ‘Animal Story‘ and ‘What A Stupid Pigeon‘ — is played by 2.5 million users each month but it wants to massively extend that. Charles Christory, Adictiz CEO and founder, is aiming to make the company one of Europe’s top five social gaming powers by 2015.

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Europe (and particularly its native France) and South America are Adictz’s biggest markets right now, but it has set its sights on broadening into new markets in those regions and elsewhere in the world.

“This fund raising round will enable Adictiz to step up the pace of its development in France and in international markets through the creation of news games, selective marketing initiatives and strategic agreements rollings its various brands under international licenses and/or derivative products,” a company announcement explains.

Christory says that the company has posted “profitable, triple-digital growth” over the last two years thanks to its range of services, which include Facebook titles — Adictiz Studios has ‘Preferred Marketing Developer‘ status from the social network — game analysis and advertising campaigns.

Explaining its decision to invest in the startup, Omnes Capital’s Francois-Xavier Dedde comments: “We were immediately won over by the Adictiz’s positioning in social and mobile gaming and its dynamic teams…We are delighted to be playing a role in accelerating the development of this ambitious company, which has already shown potential since it first launched.”

Japanese pair DeNA and GREE lead the mobile gaming industry, Zynga has faltered of late but it remains the most played social gaming firm on the planet, with 300 million users. DeNA, in particular, is on a tear and it recently posted record quarterly revenues of $627 million (up 45 percent annually), with profits of $254 million.

The Japanese markets, where DeNA and GREE pick up the bulk of their revenues, sees average revenue per user of more than $10, international markets are less lucrative but still have vast potential thanks to the continued grow in smartphone adoption and Facebook’s 1 billion plus userbase.

We’ll keep an eye on how Adictiz progresses with this new capital set to turbo-charge its development.

Image via Ian Lamont / Flickr

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