Information and Research on gamigo
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This is supposed a neutral collection of facts, purely for informative purposes. Own research, using mostly official company homepages, Wikipedia (both English and German), LinkedIn and archive.org to view older versions of official company homepages.
Gamigo was founded in 2000 in Hamburg, Germany as a professional online gaming magazine and community platform - in direct competition to Gamestar and PCGames. Unlike Gamestar and PCGames they never released any print issues though, and remained an online-only magazine.
Very soon after the initial founding, Gamigo attracted funding through two venture captial firms. Next to their gaming magazine core business, they started renting out game servers for first person shooters, especially the original Counterstrike (the Half-Life mod). They even named their brand "Gamigostrike" - that's how central those Counterstrike servers were to their server business.
They also provided (German) online communities for various games, although for the most part those were fan-managed websites and forums. Gamigo provided free hosting for those fan-sites and in return placed advertisments on those sites - but the all the content, news and moderation of those sites was typically unpaid volunteer labor. Gamigo earned somewhat of a notoriety in the German gaming scene after "overtaking" and "commercializing/destroying" several pre-existing gaming-communities and fan-sites.
In 2001 they started purchasing rights/licenses for publishing existing games into the German market (providing translations and servers): The 4th Coming, Anarchy Online, Puzzle Pirates, Last Chaos, Fiesta Online - while also acting as a publisher to some German developers, for games like Cultures Online and Ufo Online.
They initially started to sell subscriptions, but eventually switched to free to play models for all of their games, with players reporting varying degrees of aggressive predatory sales practices in their games.
It wasn't until 2008 that they started expanding in the EU, and servicing other languages than just German - starting with French and Spanish. By 2013 they also started buying licenses/rights for publishing games to the American market.
After multiple series of mergers and acquisitions throughout Europe and Asia, their 2018 acquisition of Trion Worlds marked their big forage into the American market. Soon after that, they went public (IPO) in 2019.
Gamigo is an investor oriented company, that creates value for shareholders through acquistions of fast growing companies. At least that's how they present themselves in their press releases.
They even proudly present their acquisitions in the about section of their homepage: https://corporate.gamigo.com/en/about-gamigo/#aquisitionsList of mergers and acquisitions (as far as could dig out):
.) 2008 Gamigo itself is acquired by Axel Springer AG
.) 2011 partial acquisition of OnsOn Soft, Korea (Fiesta Online) - could not find any hard info. Company homepage first appeared in 2007 - and finally disappeared in 2019 (but may have been abandoned before that)
.) 2011 partial acquisition of Reakktor Media, Germany (Neocron, Black Prophecy), founded 1991, shut down in 2012
.) 2012 Axel Springer AG sells Gamigo to strategic investor Samarion
.) 2013 (through a subsidiary) acquisition of gulli.com (IT community), founded 1998, shut down 2018
.) 2015 acquistion of next idea GmbH, Germany (online gaming community/portal looki.de that dabbled as publisher for browser games) - founded 2005, current status unclear, but seems to be an empty shell company now. looki.de redirects to a looki branded marketing landing page for a selection of gamigo games.
.) 2015 acquistion of GameSpree, Germany (mobile+browser game publisher, Kings & Legends, WAR2 Glory) - could not find any useful information on that company. webpage appears first in 2013 and was replaced with a redirect to looki.com in 2017 and later gamigo.com
.) 2015 acquistion of Infernum Games, Germany (Online games publisher) - could not find any useful information on that company
.) 2015 acquistion of Mobile Business Engine, (mobile in-game payment provider) - again, could not find any useful information on that company
.) 2015 acquistion of Poged, Germany (browsergame portal selling their own game currency) - again not much to find. website appeared in 2013 and disappeared in 2018.
.) 2016 acquistion of Aeria Games, Germany - (browser games, mobile games, online games) - founded 2006 in USA but ended up headquartered in Berlin after multiple mergers and acquisitions. Got immediately restructured as a Gamiga subsidiary, letting go of 40% of staff.
.) 2017 100% takeover of Mediakraft Networks GmbH, Germany (multi-channel-network with some bigname german youtubers signed on), founded 2011, shut down 2021
.) 2018 acquisition of Trion Worlds Inc., USA (Trove, Rift, Defiance), founded 2006, shut down 2018, 4 days after the acquisition
.) 2019 acquisition of WildTangent Inc., USA (game service company, especially ingame-ads for mobile), founded 1998, now subsidiary
.) 2020/2021 acquisition of Verve Wireless Inc, USA (according to gamigo's own press release) - could not find any information on them. there's only a "Verve Group", which fits the bill - but their homepage claims to be owned by someone else.
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nobody who plays mmos trusts Gamigo. Even if its the best game ever and Gamigo doesn't interfere, its going to hurt the game.
I guess its better than no game. Hopefully they are trying to turn their image around but its still gonna hurt. No one cares about details. They hear Gamigo and they are gone.
Unfortunate really because you have some really cool ideas. Lets hope your ideas can overcome Gamigos terrible reputation.
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@Rungar said in Information and Research on gamigo:
nobody who plays mmos trusts Gamigo
I keep hearing this, but I've played MMOs since the 90s and have no problem with Gamigo...further, I talked to the eSports people at the local college and most of them have no issue with Gamigo as well.
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@GamerSeuss said in Information and Research on gamigo:
@Rungar said in Information and Research on gamigo:
nobody who plays mmos trusts GamigoI keep hearing this, but I've played MMOs since the 90s and have no problem with Gamigo...further, I talked to the eSports people at the local college and most of them have no issue with Gamigo as well.
Sounds like it checks out, job done here.. Google would have netted you a faster and more accurate result.
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I have never played a game under gamigo, so I have no opinion on this until fractured releases.
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Interesting info, thanks for posting.
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Nice investigation
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Gamino runs a few "low pop" mmo's mostly trypical f2p "china" type's, their most "western" standard mmo would be Rift, a game they got and keep running after it failed under its first publisher.
Trove the voxel mmo is fairly populair and still has good reviews.Gamino is a investment company and ofc has done its share of mergers and letting go of departments that they see no need for but done nothing out of the ordinairy compared to other players on the market.
I see no real issue with Gamino as a company except that they might not be fully invested into the PR side of things. Fractured might become a realy populair mmo if they can step-up their PR game when release is getting closer.
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there is a video made by a youtuber on MMO from gamigo:
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@grofire That video is kinda true but aso very wrong when it comes to Fractured. Gamigo did not BUY the company making factured, they did not BUY the IP, they prob have a say in some things but the guys/gals from Fractured are still the boss over everyting they do.
Guess the following vid would be a better cover towards this game (fractured) and Gamigo.
edit : Link to vid wont work. so link adress would be youtu.be and add > /CQjWpGC-pWI to it
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@grofire said in Information and Research on gamigo:
there is a video made by a youtuber on MMO from gamigo:
And not only MMO's, every game they get on their hands..., just check Aeria Games games.
@Rungar said in Information and Research on gamigo:
nobody who plays mmos trusts Gamigo. Even if its the best game ever and Gamigo doesn't interfere, its going to hurt the game.
I guess its better than no game. Hopefully they are trying to turn their image around but its still gonna hurt. No one cares about details. They hear Gamigo and they are gone.
Unfortunate really because you have some really cool ideas. Lets hope your ideas can overcome Gamigos terrible reputation.
Indeed, nobody does, so sad gamigo got their hands on this game. Let's see how long it lasts.
