Peak Games Demonstrates Explosive Growth in Emerging Markets, Raises $19M and Now Ranks #6 in Social Gaming

ISTANBUL, TURKEY AND SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Korea Newswire)--Peak Games, the fastest-growing emerging markets social gaming company, today announced new acquisitions, new partnerships, new social games, new funding and massive, continued growth in some of the largest emerging markets including: Turkey, MENA (Middle East North Africa), South America and Mexico. Peak Games has been executing on aggressive growth plans by acquiring two hardcore strategy games studios Umaykut and Erlikhan, new partnerships with companies including RockYou, new games including Umaykut and Happy Farm, and updating and improving developed games including TrendKiz and Okey. The company also raised an additional 11.5M USD in new funding from Earlybird Venture Capital, Hummingbird Ventures and a strategic investor (bringing the total raised to 19M USD) which will be used for market expansion, additional game studio acquisitions, hiring, and user acquisition. Peak's games now reach over 16M monthly active users (MAU source: AppData).

Core to the company's strategy, Peak Games reaches underserved markets with localized and culturally-specific games that employ strong engagement and monetization strategies. Peak Games is now among the top six social gaming companies in the world. See Peak Games images and statistics: bit.ly/peakstats.

“At Peak Games, understanding emerging markets like Turkey, MENA and Latin America is in our DNA! We‘re at a point where we know what kind of games they enjoy, how to acquire new users in specific regions, what triggers virality, and, ultimately, how to monetize. Our development studios are focusing on creating the best games on the market and we’re making sure that they‘re culturally relevant. Now with the acquisition of Umaykut, we’re very excited for our next-generation core games.” said Sidar Sahin, chief executive officer and founder of Peak Games.

While much of Peak Games' rapid rise was originally due to games based on traditional Turkish and Arabic card and board games such as top performing game Okey, the company has expanded offerings to include a wider range from hardcore games such as Umaykut, and to games specifically for women and girls such as TrendKiz. All games provide localized content showing a strong understanding of the local audience. In addition to developing its own IP (intellectual property), Peak has partnered with several of the leading global social gaming developers -- including RockYou, which created Zoo World 2; The Broth, which created Barn Buddy; and MagnetJoy, which created Pet Party -- to create and publish localized versions of those games. Fostering even further growth, Peak Games has launched games such as Happy Farm in modern Arabic in the MENA region, and is supporting this game while developing others through a strategic acquisition of Umaykut and Erlikhan game studios.

Turkey is already the fourth largest Facebook market, with over 30 million users and growing, representing over 87 percent of the online population (source: Socialbakers.com). Taken as a whole, the MENA region is one of the fastest growth areas for Facebook and social networking, with the number of users growing by 30 percent over the last six months to 35 million users and forecasted to reach 250 million users by 2015. People across MENA are increasingly active on the Facebook platform and starting to use it in a more sophisticated way as they interact more with each other via games. Latin America is currently at 130 million Facebook users with the entire region growing at 37 percent over the last six months. More specifically, Brazil has 26 million Facebook users representing a whopping 98 percent growth in the last six months and in Mexico Facebook has 29 million users representing 21 percent growth over the last six months (source: Social Bakers).

“Similar to most emerging markets, the patterns we see in MENA gaming are exceptionally exciting, Given our current portfolio of games and those in the pipeline that incorporate local languages, we believe we will be able to connect with users in MENA and Latin America by offering games that speak to their needs and passions.” said Rina Onur, chief strategy officer for Peak Games.

Peak Games' growth to date includes:

- Over 16M (MAU) play Peak's games every month (up from 10M MAU end of May representing a 60 percent increase).

- Every day, more than 5M people meet, greet, chat and pass time with each other while playing Peak Games (up from 2M in May and a 150 percent growth)!

- Peak's games are played in 5 time zones, 4 continents and 5 languages.

- Some top game titles include: Okey, Okey Plus, TrendKız (FabGirl), Akvaryum, Komşu Çiftlik, Petiler, Umaykut, Çiftlik Adası and Zoo World 2.

- Happy Farm is a new game in MENA with over 1.6M active users (MAU).

- Peak Games‘ most popular game is card-based Okey, which is by far Turkey’s most popular online social game with 4.5 million monthly active users (MAU).

- TrendKiz, a fashion and styling game, is the first specifically female-targeted game in the region.

- Umaykut is a social strategy game based on the story of three Turkic clans bringing the core players of the region to the Facebook platform. The company is focusing on creating similar titles with its Umaykut & Erlikhan studios.

- Studios are gearing up to bring social games to the mobile platform, where CEO Sidar Sahin has an extensive background.

Website: http://www.peakgames.net

This is a news release distributed by Korea Newswire on behalf of this company.