社交游戏领域最新的并购案发生在山景城社交游戏开发者playdom对圣地亚哥开发者Metaplace的并购。

metaplace

Metaplace公司由前索尼娱乐的Raph Koster和John Donham于2006年共同创立，后者同时兼任公司的首席执行官。这两位合伙人曾在索尼开发出Everquest II无尽的任务2这样的游戏来。

在此次并购完成后，原Metaplace公司成员将并入playdom，由John Donham负责运营，继续留在圣地亚哥。

playdom公司首席技术官David Sobeski表示，他们相当期待Metaplace社交游戏开发团队的到来，并寄望这支团队能在未来的游戏开发中产生影响。

Metaplace

In the latest of a series of acquisitions, Mountain View social gaming startup Playdom has bought Metaplace — a San Diego game developer.

Metaplace was founded by Sony Online Entertainment veterans who worked on titles such as “Star Wars Galaxies” and “Everquest II.” Its co-founders — Raph Koster and CEO John Donham — left Sony in 2006 to start Metaplace, which launched its first social games this year, “Island Life” and “My Vineyard.”

Donham, game designer Koster and other Metaplace employees will remain with Playdom, with Donham running its San Diego operations. “We are thrilled to be joining the Playdom family and contributing to their stellar roster of social games with both new titles and technology,” Donham said in a statement Thursday announcing the deal.

Financial terms weren’t disclosed.

With the acquisition, Playdom gains both new titles and Metaplace’s social gaming technology expertise.

“We expect that the Metaplace social game engine will form a key part of our unified back-end technology platform for Playdom’s games going forward,” David Sobeski, Playdom’s chief technology officer, said in the statement. “We think the Metaplace engine is a competitive advantage in that it will take other companies years to duplicate its capabilities.”

Metaplace’s backers included Silicon Valley entrepreneurs Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, as well as Crescendo Ventures and Charles River Ventures. According o TechCruch, it had $9.4 million in funding.

Playdom makes games for Facebook and MySpace including “Mobsters” and “Sorority Life.” It has received $76 million from several investors. Last month, it announced it had bought Hive7.com, a Palo Alto startup known for its medieval-themed “Knighthood” game.