Jagex acquires Pipeworks Studio to grow in North America

Jagex, the game company best known for Runescape, announced it has acquired Pipeworks Studio. The newly acquired studio has shipped over 120 games. It’s the first acquisition Jagex has made of an external studio.

Pipeworks is an Oregon-based studio with over 200 employees. Its most recent title was spectator game The Walking Dead: Last Mile, which it made in collaboration with Genvid and which launched earlier this year. According to Jagex, it’s interested in growing in North America following its own acquisition by The Carlyle Group for $530 million last year. It also plans to give Pipeworks access to Runescape’s IP.

Lindsay Gupton, Pipeworks Studio’s CEO said in a statement, “This is an opportunity for us to level up one again because we each bring our own distinct experiences to the partnership. Jagex’s approach of providing a leading platform for developers to create lasting and content-rich community-driven games fully aligns with Pipeworks’ work-for-hire model and focus on building innovative games and technology.”

Next for Jagex

Phil Mansell, Jagex CEO, told GamesBeat of the acquisition: “In Pipeworks we saw a studio that was a superb fit based on what we were looking for. They’re really strong in PC/Console Games-as-a-Service, they’ve been shipping high quality games for decades and have a profitable growing business. This means that now the Jagex family has even better development capabilities, greater diversified revenue and proper operating presence in the US – all of which helps us with our quest to be a leader in community-driven games.”

In addition to its acquisition, Jagex also announced today that it’s working on a new, unnamed IP. All it has so far specified is that the title is an open-world survival title made in Unreal Engine 5. It also plans to expand the Runescape universe.

Mansell said, “After two decades, the RuneScape MMORPGs are bigger than ever and we’re working hard to build an even bigger community. We’re doing that by continuing to serve our players with superb live-ops and game upgrades for our two big RuneScape titles, and we’re also branching out the RuneScape IP with additional games. Furthermore, we are growing our third-party publishing portfolio with Jagex Partners, our indie publisher for community-driven games. And we intend to continue to make acquisitions to build out our talent, our portfolio and our player community.”

Originally appeared on: TheSpuzz