Zattikka buys three social games firms with IPO raise to challenge Zynga

Both the social games development space and London’s AIM stock exchange welcomed a new entrant on Monday.

Zattikka, a new multi-platform studio founded by Virgin Interactive games executives Tim Chaney (pictured) and Mark Opzoomer, raised £12.6 million by floating to finance working capital and the acquisition of three existing social game companies.

The new company is buying Hattrick Holdings, Sneaky Games, Inc. and Concept Art House, Inc to develop games it wants to distribute in Europe, the U.S. and China, with both subscriptions and virtual goods revenue streams.

And the planned acquisitions aren’t yet over. Zattikka told the market it will “adopt a buy and build strategy by seeking to acquire existing profitable, but under-exploited, IP game assets and businesses with proven skill sets in monetising social and mobile games”.

But the floatation and acquisitions have used up £9.5 million. Zattikka had a £22 million market cap at the floatation price.

Zattikka actually launched in 2009, and took funding from Atomico later that year, but had since been quiet.

Long story short, some institutional investors are apparently excited about the social gaming opportunity furrow being ploughed by the likes of Zynga, Playfish and dozens of smaller independent studios. Those chasers may need extra heft of this sort to grow larger.

Hattrick of Sweden has 860,000 players for its two main games – its eponymous soccer manager title Hattrick and its music industry role playing game Popmundo. Fourteen percent of those players are said to be paying subscribers.
Concept art House of San Francisco and Shanghai has worked on games including Command & Conquer and World OfWarcraft and wil be used as a design studio.
Sneaky Games of Austin, Texas, publishes three freemium fantasy role-playing games plus Monster Island for NBCUniversal’s Syfy – all with very few users – but Zattikka says it wants to market those titles more heavily.

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