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Did OpenFeint really just sell for 368x revenues?

By on April 27, 2011

Earlier this week, Japan’s Gree bought OpenFeint for $104 million.

OpenFeint provides a social layer of connectivity for mobile games. With services like leaderboards, cross-promotion, game marketing, friends lists and so on, it provides a social layer for 5,000 developers, 17,000 games and 75 million gamers. The acquisition follows hot on the heels of DeNA’s acquisition of ngMoco for $400 million.

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GREE is Japan’s largest mobile social gaming company. Their investor deck to announce the OpenFeint acquisition makes it clear why they did the deal: they want to reach the widest possible audience through M&A and partnerships, and OpenFeint triples their reach.

I imagine that catching up with DeNA may be part of it too.

OpenFeint’s valuation and multiples

The nice thing about Japanese transactions is that listed companies have to give details of the transaction. Here are the details they gave about the underlying revenues and profits of OpenFeint:

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Can that be right? That in 2010, OpenFeint made only $282,500 in revenue and a loss of $6.6 million?

If those numbers are correct, then GREE acquired OpenFeint for a multiple of 368x revenues.

If I were Scoreloop, I’d be scouring the East looking for a sugar daddy to acquire me right now.

About Nicholas Lovell

Nicholas is the founder of Gamesbrief, a blog dedicated to the business of games. It aims to be informative, authoritative and above all helpful to developers grappling with business strategy. He is the author of a growing list of books about making money in the games industry and other digital media, including How to Publish a Game and Design Rules for Free-to-Play Games, and Penguin-published title The Curve: thecurveonline.com