Devs of Popular MMO Might Be Sold Second Time
UK-based Jagex, the company behind the RuneScape brand, is about to be sold, as Sky News reported. If the deal goes through, it will mean that the studio will change ownership for the second time in three years.
According to Sky News, the British game studio Jagex, which developed the popular MMO game RuneScape, could soon be acquired by the Luxembourg company CVC Capital Partners.
The media reports that this transaction is expected to be finalized in the next few days. The sum that the Carlyle Group, the current owner of Jagex, could get for selling the studio is impressive. The amount is striking, as we're talking about 900 million British pounds - although initially Jagex's valuation was said to be around a billion pounds.
It's worth noting that besides RuneScape, this British company located in Cambridge has developed two other games - This Means War and Melvor Idle. However, these games didn't gain wider recognition.
This case is interesting because Carlyce Group bought the developers of RuneScape just three years ago, in January 2021. However, the company has been actively seeking potential buyers for the Jagex team, which develops (and releases) games, for the past 5 months.
CVC Capital Partners, the supposed future owner of the studio, is a company that primarily operates in the private equity industry. The company from Luxembourg "manages assets worth a total of 118 billion euros" while also being involved in various sports businesses, such as being a shareholder in the Six Nations Championship (via PCGamer). In the past, this company was a majority owner of Formula 1.
