Two Gameview co-founders check out of DeNA while another starts a Canadian studio
There’s a little bit of a shake up at DeNA’s Gameview Studios, the early mobile-social gaming company the Japanese giant acquired back in late 2010.
Having hit their earnout dates, two of Gameview Studios’ co-founders, Riz Virk and Mitch Liu have left the company to work on new projects — which are probably related to gaming. Meanwhile, Virk’s brother Irfan has decided to stay on at DeNA and start a new gaming studio for the company in Vancouver.
According to Liu and Virk’s profiles on LinkedIn, both left Gameview Studios in January. Liu is currently listed as the co-founder and president of Stealth Newco and Virk is the co-founder of a company called Bayview (which is what he used to incubate his last gaming company and help jumpstart rivals like Pocket Gems, which used to be called Streetview). The change means that all three original Gameview co-founders are now onto other projects
Gameview’s third co-founder, Irfan Virk used to run an office out of Pakistan that developed titles inexpensively for the company. Now he will be heading up DeNA’s new subsidiary studio in Vancouver, British Columbia. Scheduled to open in late February, the studio will be called DeNA Studios Canada and will be responsible for design, development and operation support for other DeNA group companies. But it will primarily support Gameview titles. According to DeNA, the new Canadian studio will start with $600,000 in funding.
DeNA, which is trying to build out a global mobile-social gaming network called Mobage, bought Gameview in Sept. 2010 for an undisclosed sum. Gameview’s best-known game is Tap Fish, which makes more than $1 million a month in revenue and is currently the top grossing app in the Android market. Virk recently did a spot on The Daily Show where he defended the freemium gaming model and his game Tap Fish.
Around the same time DeNA bought Gameview, it also agreed to pay up to $403 million for another U.S.-based gaming company, ngmoco:). But we haven’t seen much turnover with that deal as the last part of their earnout kicks in during the middle of this year. Ngmoco’s chief executive Neil Young also became a director at the company.
February 2nd, 2012 at 6:26 pm
[...] [Update] Tap Fish – Gameview Studios regains the No. 1 spot on the Android charts this week with its game Tap Fish. The game, which earns over $1 million dollars a month, is one of the most popular titles on the Android market, and has seen over 10 million downloads. The game was last updated on Jan. 28 to add a new mystery breeding event and support for shorter breeding times. Two of Gameview’s co-founders just left after hitting their earnout dates following the compan… [...]
February 6th, 2012 at 1:23 pm
[...] also seeing departures from some of the other U.S. assets DeNA acquired the same year. Two co-founders from Gameview Studios, another startup DeNA acquired around the same time it did the Ngmoco deal, have also recently left [...]
February 8th, 2012 at 9:18 am
[...] on its global platform and bringing Mobage to iOS. The company also highlighted its decision to open a studio in Vancouver, British Columbia to support its first-party development efforts. DeNA also revealed it spent more than $12.4 [...]
June 29th, 2012 at 4:42 pm
[...] in revenue and is currently the top grossing app in the Android market." (emphasis mine) Two Gameview co-founders check out of DeNA while another starts a Canadian studio A quick Google search for GameView revenue has Tapfish consistently at the top of the Android [...]
August 13th, 2012 at 9:12 am
[...] of San Francisco-based game companies to set up north of the border, following in the footsteps of Gameview Studios and [...]
October 26th, 2012 at 10:06 am
[...] the company’s Gameview Studios subsidary lost co-founders Riz Virk and Mitch Liu after they hit their earnout dates and moved on to start new projects. After Ngmoco passed its own earnout date its vice president of social applications Jason Oberfest [...]