UK game developer and publisher continues “rapid global expansion” with French studio acquisition

Game developer and multiplatform publisher Kwalee has made its first ever studio acquisition with a deal that brings French developer Tictales into its increasingly-global family.

Kwalee has achieved more than 750 million downloads across its hypercasual games portfolio. The deal to buy Tictales is the first acquisition by Kwalee in its 10-year history, signalling its serious intent to build upon global hypercasual success with both casual and hybrid-casual titles.

Tictales, whose narrative based mobile games have been downloaded more than 6 million times and played for more than 350 million hours, will continue to operate with creative independence while benefiting from Kwalee’s marketing expertise.

14 games have been developed and published by Tictales since the studio’s founding in 2015, including Perfume of Love, Fictions, and Swiit Crush: Interactive Stories. The company specialises in free-to-play romance narrative games.

Headquartered in Leamington Spa, Kwalee has doubled in size over the past year thanks to “rapid global expansion”. The developer and publisher also has offices in Bangalore, India and Beijing, China along with remote team members all around the world. With the acquisition of Tictales, the company now has team members spread across 18 countries.

Kwalee boasts the world’s most prolific hypercasual games development studio, having published more than 40 number one mobile games, most of which were developed by a dedicated internal team.

Internal development is complemented by a dedicated mobile game publishing team working with talented developers all over the world, led by SEGA and Ubisoft veteran Will Cox.

Christophe Chocho, sales manager and co-founder of Tictales, said: “We have been committed since day one to creating amazing mobile fiction for our audience and I’m very proud of all the team members of Tictales for this milestone.

“The long-term vision of Tictales is to bring bigger franchises to the world, with our production capacity increasing and new talents joining our team. We and Kwalee share the same philosophy about high-quality games and we cannot wait to show our exciting new projects to the world.”

Kwalee CEO David Darling added: “It’s a proud moment for us to make Kwalee’s first acquisition, and Tictales is the perfect partner. With their successful track record of casual mobile games and ability to tell a compelling story through their games, their ambitions match our own and we’re looking forward to building collective success.”