Ubisoft acquires mobile games firm Ketchapp

Assassin’s Creed publisher Ubisoft has taken a larger stake in the mobile games market with the acquisition of Ketchapp.

Founded in 2014, Ketchapp is best known for a series of smaller free-to-play games such as Stack, Twist, Jelly Jump and Qubes, and regularly adds new titles to its portfolio on an almost weekly basis. It currently has 84 titles available for iPhone.

This rapidly growing portfolio has generated 700m downloads for Ketchapp, averaging at more than 23m downloads per month. It is this achievement, and Ketchapp’s expertise in mobile advertising and cross-promotion that attracted Ubisoft’s attention.

Thanks to the acqusition, Ubisoft is now the fourth largest publisher of mobile games in the world when measured by the number of downloads.

“With Ketchapp, Ubisoft acquires a highly profitable publisher with a successful portfolio of free-to-play games for mobile,” said Ubisoft’s executive director for mobile Jean-Michel Detoc. “This acquisition gives Ubisoft one of the world’s leading mobile game publishers and reinforces our advertising capabilities in mobile gaming.”

GamaSutra notes that Ketchapp has previously courted controversy as other developers have alleged it has cloned their titles. A prominent example is claims that Ketchapp’s best-selling 2048 is a clone of mobile hit Threes!, while some have claimed the art style for Skyward and several other games is copying that of Ustwo Games’ seminal Monument Valley.