Zynga buys seemingly dead indie dev Floodgate Entertainment

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...A company that hasn't sent out a press release in nearly five years

If not for the announcement that Zynga just acquired Floodgate Entertainment, we would have assumed the latter went out of business a while ago. It has only released one game on the iTunes App Store, more than a year ago, and the company's last press release was issued in 2006. But apparently Zynga sees something valuable there.

The acquisition becomes Zynga's 10th corporate takeover in just 10 months, and highlights how quickly it wants to expand. As this case demonstrates, though, it's kinds of like going on a shopping spree at a Salvation Army.

Financial terms of the Floodgate deal were not disclosed, but we can't imagine Zynga had to pay much to buy a company whose library is almost exclusively made up of mobile games designed before the first Android phone went on sale. The pictured title to the right, Civ IV: War of Two Cities, is one such example.

Floodgate was created by Paul Neurath after his previous company, Looking Glass, went under. Interestingly, Looking Glass was an extremely capable developer, turning out hits like Thief and System Shock, then working with Irrational Games for System Shock 2, which heavily inspired the best aspects of 2007's BioShock. Maybe Zynga's hoping some of that spark lives on in Floodgate?

Zynga, a company that didn't even exist four years ago, is now estimated to be worth as much as $9 billion. So it clearly knows what it's doing. And for Neurath, even though he's no longer his own boss, this is probably a dream come true.

[Source:Tech Crunch]

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Mar 21, 2011