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Nicholas Lovell
Home   >   Analysis and Opinion   >   Analysis   >   Bigpoint’s revenue growth

Bigpoint’s revenue growth

By on June 20, 2011

I’ve just been going back through some old blog posts for GAMESbrief Unplugged: Volume 2.

What struck me was the impressive revenue progression of Bigpoint, the browser-based games company that makes free-to-play games mainly aimed at core gamers.

Here are the numbers:

  • 2007: €10 million
  • 2008: €28 million
  • 2009: €60 million
  • 2010: €200 million

That’s pretty impressive stuff. Revenues have pretty well tripled every year since 2007. If they do it again, they’ll make half a billion euros in 2011.

That would be an enormous achievement.

About Nicholas Lovell

As well as founding Gamesbrief, Nicholas is a consultant to the games industry on online and corporate strategy and financial matters. He can be contacted at nicholas@gamesbrief.com Following a decade long financial career in the City of London, Nicholas founded Lodestar Partners, a corporate finance boutique that focused exclusively on the games industry. From 2006 to 2008, Nicholas was CEO of GameShadow, a games website and patching engine. He is a non-executive director of developer nDreams and provides consultancy services to a number of companies including Firefly and Huddle.
  • F4LL0UT

    Oh my, Bigpoint. I can’t hear that name anymore. One of their producers paid us a visit at the Games Academy for a couple of days. Those people certainly have more luck than brains and represent everything that’s wrong with the game industry.

  • http://www.gamesbrief.com Nicholas Lovell

    It’s a shame you think that. With 200 million players (albeit registered not active), three successful games (Farmerama, Dark Orbit, Sea Fight) and a recent valuation of over $600 million, I’m not sure I think they’ve just got lucky.

    What was the issue you were seeing?

  • Pingback: Big Point goes from €10 to €200 Million Income in 4 Years « A Great Becoming…

  • F4LL0UT

    As far as I was informed by people who had more of an insight into the company those projects were mostly created by external developers and then bought by BigPoint – any serious game producer in Germany knows that BP were just lucky with Dark Orbit – nobody could have pretold the game’s success and it’s still their most important game. The first serious internal project by BP (that had a budget of several millions) on the other hand was Poison Ville which turned out to be a disaster filled with an awful amount of ridiculous flaws – still their producers seem to be perfectly confident of their game production skills. Also note that BigPoint is offering zillions of different games created by others most of which are extremely subpar. The company’s strategy obviously is to get as many games as possible, expecting that among them there is going to be a few gems that pay off (and it’s really a microscopic amount in comparison to the total amount of their games). So in my eyes the growth of BP is an incredibly unintelligent process and becomes especially annoying in combination with the company’s arrogance.

  • Mike

    2010 revenue is way overstated above. Cut the 200m by half and you are at it. Luck is their skill, and still hoping for another hit after Farmerama. Many producers left this summer, and co-CEO Arthur Bastings as well. For personal reasons-whatever works.

  • http://www.gamesbrief.com Nicholas Lovell

    What’s your source? I got some guidance after the $350 million investment earlier this year. Ben Rooney at the Wall Street Journal asked the question of management outright, and this is the answer that he got. http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2011/04/26/bigpoint-in-350-million-deal/

    I estimated that the valuation was at 3-3.5x revenue. Your number suggests its 6-7x revenue. I struggle a little to believe that valuation.