Opera acquires YoYo Games for $ 10 million and launches Opera Gaming division

Web browser maker Opera has acquired YoYo Games, the maker of the GameMaker Studio 2 game engine, for $ 10 million, and has also launched its Opera Gaming division.

The agreement highlights Opera’s efforts to differentiate its web browser, Opera GX, through a gaming community. Opera itself has more than 380 million people using its web browsers worldwide. Its new Opera GX game browser has seven million active users per month since December, up 350% from a year earlier.

Opera Gaming will focus on expanding Opera’s capabilities and money-making opportunities in the game, Krystian Kolondra said in an interview with GamesBeat. Publicly traded Opera is in Oslo, Norway, while YoYo Games is in Dundee, Scotland.

“A few years ago, we decided to innovate and not have to compete with the mass market in browsers,” Kolondra said. She is Opera’s executive vice president of browsers. ‘We focus on some segments that are actually growing and meaningful. So we decided to go play. ”

GameMaker Studio 2 has found its niche as a tool for making 2D games, and it is used by people who have very little training in skills like programming. Kolondra said the technology has reached a point where people are just as interested in making their own games as playing them. Opera also has a built-in cryptocurrency wallet.

YoYo Games had more than 400,000 new registered users by 2020.

“It lowers the access limit for everyone to start making their games,” Kolondra said.

The games can be offered on a wide range of web-supported platforms, including PCs, iOS / Android mobile devices and consoles.

The general manager of YoYo Games, Stuart Poole, will stay with Russell Kay at the business. YoYo Games has been working on the GameMaker engine for years and has been downloaded more than 10 million times since 2012.

Opera launched the Opera GX game browser in 2019. It includes customization options, sound effects, background music, a game-inspired design, as well as CPU, memory, and network bandwidth limiters that make the browser less resourceful.

Some of the big hits made with GameMaker include Risk of Rain, Undertale and Hyper Light Drifter. These games have sold millions of copies. Kolondra said that the company does not intend to make exclusive games offered only with the Opera GX browser, as the goal is to create a community around Opera GX users, but also make GameMaker Pro 2 available set for those who want to make games on different platforms.

Kolondra said that good browser performance is essential for even 2D games, and to maintain the performance on mobile devices and laptops, as well as variable bandwidth and connectivity, one has to think outside the traditional application silos. The line between building good games and good browsers has been eroding for years – with game interactivity over internet connections, and browsers becoming more functional and sophisticated, he said.

Opera GX has received good reviews from players who do not want to sacrifice performance by just having a web browser running, Kolondra said. It has more than a million ratings so far.

“For us, gaming is now more like a community,” Kolondra said. “It will accelerate our growth, because it will be a very unique value proposition. GameMaker Studio makes it easy for people to create games. ”