Anipang 2 is SundayToz' second smash hit in Korea, now set to go global with Smilegate.

Smilegate, Korea-based maker of online games, has just announced a $112 million buyout of 20% of Sundaytoz’ stock in a move that makes the company behind global success, Crossfire, the largest stake holder.

Smilegate is one of the most successful players in the Korean online gaming industry. For the last last two consecutive years Smilegate has been the proud owner / developer of the world's highest grossing online game. Crossfire, with revenues of over $1Bn in 2012 and 2013. The purchase of SundayToz stock now makes it the largest stake holder of the developers behind Korea's most successful online game, Anipang, which was the first game to be released on the hugely successful Kakao gaming platform. Anipang was released in July 2012, and has been followed up recently by Anipang2.

The investment has been made to combine the casual mobile game line-up of Sundaytoz with its know-how and global networks related to global game services from Smilegate, presumably with the aim of bringing Korea's most successful mobile game to the international audience.

The decision reached by Smilegate and Sundaytoz is noted to have more positive factors when looking far in the future, in terms of combination of two different platforms, both online & mobile. At a time when PC gaming is waning, this strategy will bring even greater strength to the organization, and represents a recent trend of gaming heavyweights teaming up to expand their capabilities and reach in the fast-changing gaming world.

The two firms will aim to leverage a greater number of opportunities through this strategic alliance.

More about Smilegate: Smilegate  was founded in 2002 and has 3 different business areas (game development, game publishing and investment). Its global game title, CrossFire, online FPS game, is now providing approximately 80 countries worldwide. Smilegate achieved sales of $37 billion. Strikingly,  over 90 percent of this revenue is derived from the global market in 2013.

More about SundayToz: SundayToz (선데이토즈) is a social game development company. It develops games for a wide range of social game/app developers and stores, such as Kakao Talk, Apple’s App Store, Google Play, Facebook, Cyworld, Naver, and other smart phone and PC platforms. SundayToz was established on June 1, 2009, and released its first app, Cyworld, in December 2009. SundayToz hit the big time, releasing Anipang on the Kakao games platform in July 2012.

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