This week, the freemium games publishing outfit at Glu Mobile Inc. took its attention away from making some of the most popular games for our smartphones and tablets to let us in on a major announcement.
As it turns out, Glu Mobile has completed the acquisition of the famous Deer Hunter trademark and associated domain names from Atari.
This chunk of news illustrates a growing trend among acquisitions in the mobile space – sometimes brands and trademarks are just as valuable to acquire as other companies and their talent.
Glu has also taken an exclusive, irrevocable worldwide license to the other intellectual property associated with the Deer Hunter brand.
Having successfully exploited the Deer Hunter franchise on mobile devices for seven years, Glu now will control the rights to this valuable gaming franchise, the company revealed Thursday.
“The Deer Hunter brand has become iconic for hunting gamers since its inception in 1997. It is a strong fit with Glu’s leadership in 3D, high production value, freemium mobile gaming,” said Niccolo de Masi, Glu President and CEO. “Glu has generated more than $21 million in revenue from the Deer Hunter brand over the past seven years, and we are delighted to now add it to our growing IP portfolio. We expect this deal to have a long-term favorable impact on gross margins, and anticipate finishing the year debt-free with double digit millions of cash.”
“In addition to continued growth on smartphones and tablets, we see significant potential to extend Deer Hunter to emerging platforms like the Mac App Store, Google Chrome and Connected TVs to round out full coverage of the future Digital Living Room,” de Masi added. “The Deer Hunter brand will continue to represent the highest-quality, most realistic hunting experience in gaming. We look forward to expanding on the brand’s success for many years to come, beginning with our launch this month of Deer Hunter: Reloaded.”
