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Zattikka sets sights on Zynga with developer acquisitions

The social-gaming company says that it has completed its acquisition of Hattrick Holdings, Sneaky Games, and Concept Art House.

Don Reisinger
CNET contributor Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has covered everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Besides his work with CNET, Don's work has been featured in a variety of other publications including PC World and a host of Ziff-Davis publications.
Don Reisinger
2 min read

A U.K.-based Zynga competitor has made some strategic moves to assert itself in the social-gaming space.

Zattikka announced yesterday that it has completed the acquisitions of online-gaming firms, Hattrick Holdings, Sneaky Games, and Concept Art House.

According to Zattikka, Hattrick Holdings is best known for its free-to-play online soccer manager, Hattrick. Concept Art House is a development studio that has worked on a host of games, including Command and Conquer and World of Warcraft. Sneaky Games has a three-game portfolio focusing on online role-playing games.

"The vision for the company is to become a large scale, diverse games publisher with products operating across growth digital platforms, and with a targeted geographic emphasis in Europe, the U.S. and China," Zattikka wrote in a statement yesterday. "The company proposes to achieve this by developing Zattikka through strategic acquisitions and accelerating on-going organic growth."

Although Zattikka acquired some startup funding in 2009, the company has been operating behind closed doors since then. In addition to the acquisitions, Zattikka announced yesterday that it has joined the London Stock Exchange's AIM growth market, becoming one of 3,000 companies that have joined the market since its launch in 1995.

As Zattikka charts its path to success, Zynga, a company that has already achieved great heights in the social-gaming space, is also working on expansion. Just last month, in fact, the company announced that it had acquired OMGPOP for a reported $180 million, plus another $30 million in employee-retention payments. The acquisition revolved mainly around Draw Something, a Pictionary-like mobile game that has taken the world by storm.

Although it might be difficult for Zattikka to catch up to Zynga, the company has a strong executive pedigree. Zattikka's executive chairman is Harald Ludwig, the former chairman of Lionsgate Entertainment. The company's president Tim Chaney previously ran Virgin Interactive Entertainment.