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Dublin-headquartered Keywords Studios has announced its latest acquisition – creative marketing agency Maverick Media.
Just a few months after its last acquisition, Keywords Studios is snapping up another firm in the UK market. The video games services company confirmed today (27 August) that it has acquired video game marketing agency Maverick Media in a £3.6m deal.
Based in London, Maverick Media was founded in 1995 and is one of the longest established video game creative agencies in Europe. It currently has a staff of 16, producing marketing campaigns and related services for games publishers, developers and brands.
Keywords Studios said it will pay £2.4m in cash and £300,000 in the issue of new shares to the seller one year after the deal is completed. The remaining £900,000, in a mix of cash and shares, will be dependent on the company achieving performance targets over the six months after the acquisition is complete.
The Dublin-headquartered firm said that with little client overlap between the two companies, the acquisition of Maverick will extend Keywords’ client base in its growing marketing services business.
‘A strong brand’
“We are delighted that Maverick and its talented team are joining Keywords Studios,” said Keywords Studios CEO Andrew Day.
“Maverick is a strong brand with a 25-year body of work in servicing video games publishers and developers and has grown successfully with the industry. We are excited about the expertise that Maverick will bring to our wider marketing business and ultimately to our client base across the group.”
More than 20 years after it was founded, Keywords Studios now has 61 facilities in 21 countries and has clients including Activision Blizzard, Bethesda, Electronic Arts, Konami, Microsoft and Epic Games.
In June, it announced the acquisition of Coconut Lizard, a studio based in Gateshead in the UK. Coconut Lizard helps game developers identify bottlenecks and performance issues, and has provided its optimisation, porting, middleware integration and game hardening services to clients including Microsoft’s Rare Studio, where it helped in the development of multiplayer game Sea of Thieves.
