Bigpoint Buys Out Console Sports Dev Team At 49Games

German online games publisher and developer Bigpoint has acquired the 43-person development team at Hamburg-based sports specialists 49Games. While 49Games will retain its intellectual property and technology assets, all of its permanent employees will transition from making console games for 49Games to making Unity 3D based web and mobile titles for Bigpoint, the company said in a statement. 49Games' past work centered on sports titles, with a specific focus on Olympic sports, such as track and field, skiing and figure skating. Past games include Winter Sports 2010 and Summer Challenge. The company's TC3 Engine and toolchain has also been used by publishers including Electronic Arts, Take-Two, Crave, and JoWood. "The team at 49Games is one of the best development teams in the console sports-games industry," Bigpoint CEO and founder Heiko Hubertz said. "We're very excited to add them to the Bigpoint team for our online games." This is Bigpoint's fourth acquisition, including last year's takeover of Radon Labs and the acquisition of Planet Moon Studios' development talent earlier this year. In April, a group of investors bought a majority stake in Bigpoint for $350 million, making it one of Europe's most valuable gaming companies. CEO Hubertz told Gamasutra at the time that the investment would help drive "aggressive" growth plans. Bigpoint announced in June that its entire library of web-based titles, including NBC Universal-licensed MMO Battlestar Galactica Online, had attracted 200 million registered users in total.