Last week, Voodoo, a French hyper casual games publisher, announced the acquisition of h8games, a studio based in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.
Helix Jump
Prior to the deal, h8games successfully collaborated with Voodoo as a third-party developer for over a year. Together they launched a number of titles such as Fire Rides, Helix Jump and Blockbuster. The most famous of them is Helix Jump with its downloads count in excess of 500 million. This is a quarter of Voodoo’s total installs.
Unofficially, Voodoo’s plans have been known for several months. The company started posting jobs for the Ukrainian office back in June. It is only now, however, that the acquisition has been made official.
And the publisher is not stopping there. Following the purchase of h8games, the company is also planning to set up a publishing office in Ukraine.
Here’s what Voodoo’s Communications Manager Youssef Gasmi told GWO via email:
Alongside working with them [h8games] as a Ukrainian studio fully embedded within Voodoo, we are also planning to open a Publishing office in Ukraine later this year. Ukraine is a fantastic hub of talents in the realm of hyper-casual game development and we are very excited to be part of it.
Youssef Gasmi, Communications Manager at Voodoo