Eidos Buys Rockpool For Up To 7.7 Million Pounds

• Posted by James Quintana Pearce
• Mon 26 Feb 2007 04:01 AM

Eidos Interactive (part of SCi Entertainment Group) has bought UK mobile games developer Rockpool Games and its sister companies Ironstone Partners and SoGoPlay for a minimum of 1.2 million pounds, increasing to a maximum of 7.7 million pounds depending on performance levels through to 2010, reports Mobile Entertainment. Rockpool’s most famous games are Worms, MotoGP and Ronnie O’Sullivan; Ironstone Partners is a licensing company while SoGoPlay develops and publishes casual web games. The purchase is part of a bid by Eidos to move into the casual and mobile gaming markets. ME has some financial details of the deal: “Revenues for the Rockpool group of companies during the 12 months to 30 June 2006 were 1.58 million pounds with earnings before interest and tax coming in at 414,000 pounds...The finer details of the deal show that the initial consideration of 1.2 million pounds will be payable as 0.7 million pounds in cash and 0.5 million pounds by the issue of new ordinary shares in SCi.” The performance bonus will be in three tranches, half in cash and half in new ordinary shares in SCi.