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Level Up and e-Games merger announced

This may come as a surprise but local online game companies Level Up! and E-Games has finalized talks of a merger. eGames made the disclosure earlier this morning at the PSE (since it’s a publicly listed company).

Both Level Up and eGames are two of the biggest players in the local online game industry are fierce competitors since the beginning.

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A copy of the press release is shown below:

MAKATI, Philippines; 14 February 2012 – IP E-Game Ventures Inc. (E-Games) and Level Up! Inc. (LUI) have reached an agreement to merge their Philippine online game publishing businesses.

In accordance with the agreement, most of E-Game’s titles and assets relating to its game publishing business will be transferred to LUI and the publishing operations of said titles will be merged into LUI’s associated online game publishing company, Playweb Games Inc. In exchange, E-Games will receive equity in LUI, a commercial interest in Playweb Games Inc. (game publisher and operator of all LUI game titles and services), and a cash consideration. The completion of the deal is subject to closing conditions.

E-Games is the first listed online gaming company in the Philippines (PSE: EG) and is the only such listed company to date. It spearheaded the free-to-play game model and has over 15.9 million registered gamers and an average of 3.5 million active users per month. It is aggressively expanding its Internet café network through acquisitions (Netopia and CyBr cafes) and franchising and will incorporate other services such as food & beverage and remittance services. Recently, E-Games has also acquired the rights to operate and sell advertisements for the NBA.com Philippine portal. It is currently developing game enhancement technologies between its Internet cafes and online games titles and is eager to extend these synergies with LUI online games.

LUI pioneered the online game business in the Philippines. Its parent company, Level Up! International Holdings (LUIH), has a subsidiary in Brazil which likewise pioneered and leads the online game publishing business there. Aside from its presence in the Philippines and Brazil, LUIH also has a joint venture in the United States with an established Korean developer.

E-Games and LUI, as a merged entity, are expected to account for the majority of the Philippine online games market. The merged entity and its associated company, Playweb Games, Inc., will have the widest gaming pre-paid cards and PINs distribution network and offer a portfolio of hugely popular and successful games between them. These include top Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) such as Cabal, Audition, Pointblank, Ragnarok, Grand Chase, Rohan and newly launched (by LUI) Bounty Hounds.

The merger is expected to strategically benefit both companies as a result of future operational synergies and savings.

The consolidation might be the result of a thinning market. We earlier wrote about this issue before in “Is the local Online Gaming industry in trouble?“.

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Avatar for Abe Olandres

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines. He is also a technology consultant, a tech columnist with several national publications, resource speaker and mentor/advisor to several start-up companies.

22 Responses

  1. Avatar for Name: Name: says:

    sir may concern po ako…. abakit po sinira ng isang gm ny ang account ko sa r.o ang pangalan po nya any gm_vrael daw….wala nman po aking violation na gingawa..sana po may makatulong

  2. Avatar for gian gian says:

    sir may concern po ako…. abakit po sinira ng isang gm ny ang account ko sa r.o ang pangalan po nya any gm_vrael daw….wala nman po aking violation na gingawa..sana po may makatulong

  3. Avatar for Hunter x hunter Hunter x hunter says:

    Sana Maglagay kayo nang ibang Laro tulad nang monster hunter frontier sigurado ko big hit kagad un sa pinas

  4. Avatar for brandon33 brandon33 says:

    sayang ang CABAL PH kung wla sana hack madami sana pa kaming Player kaso massive hackers kaya nawala na ang Compshop namin kasi nag stop na mga player namin sa pag rerent sa amin dahil sa hack kung mag-lalagay ng magandang games sana un strict sa Policy di yung pabor lang sa PHP dapat isipin din ang mga player bago bulsa dahil sa player makakakuha ng PHP

  5. Avatar for Takehiko Takehiko says:

    eh papano nadadaig na sila ng dragon nest. hindi na sila kumikita dahil sa cherry credits.

  6. Avatar for pbLOUI pbLOUI says:

    ang masasabe ko lan g..tama lahat nagn sinabe nyo..sana nga wag masyadong makasarili ung pamamalaks nila,..:D

  7. Avatar for iia iia says:

    sana naman kumuha sila ng mga mmorpg na mag cli-click sa pinas ..

  8. Avatar for awi awi says:

    sana try nila ang world of warcraft dito mag cliclick yun isa sa pinaka the best MMORPG sa buong mundo…

  9. Avatar for damonyo damonyo says:

    wow….

    sana mas manaig ung management side ng level up.. kasi sobrang bulok mag palakad ng e-games… pareho sa ran online at cabal online.. grrr…….

    sana nga magkaroon sila ng gw2 or tera online

  10. Avatar for alvin alvin says:

    ala silbi yan na merge kung ang mamalakad ay e-games. gaya ng palakad nila ng cabal. tingnan nyo sayang lng ng laro. ngayon very low econpmy. at kng baguhan ka pa sa laro ala ka ng pag asa kasi simpleng gamit na dating cheap ngayon ang mahal na. kaya pawala na ang game dahil sa palakad at kung anu-anong raket gaya ng massive hack na sila may gawa at yung godly items na galing sa kanila for php only “blackmarket” haha.

  11. Avatar for Mashups Mashups says:

    ok naman ung cabal ah^^ un nga lang panget pamamalakad ng e-games hehehe nauso kasio sa kanila massive hack^^

  12. Avatar for Cybr Cybr says:

    Sana naman may kumuha ng Guild Wars 2 PH pagkarelease. Yung GW1 PH wala na eh

  13. Avatar for Digest Digest says:

    Plenty of triple A mmos transitioned to F2P or freemium, so why bother look for online games that comes from the two companies where Pay to win is the basis of winning.

  14. Avatar for iLuvPSNandXBLA iLuvPSNandXBLA says:

    They’re doing that because of their crappy online games that don’t sell well. If they want to revitalize online gaming in the Philippines, they should stop picking up games from those cheap and low quality Korean and Chinese game developers. They better start to pick up those game franchises that have respectable reputation to the game industry.

  15. Avatar for roiji roiji says:

    monopoly :(

  16. Avatar for Juriz Juriz says:

    Kasi bro they are cheapos :) thats how they get rich

  17. Avatar for Lezuric Lezuric says:

    They just keep releasing lame games kaya nalulugi sila.. Ang dami daming international games na magaganda na sure magkiklik dito sa pinas, bakit kasi hindi yun ang kunin nila..

    • Avatar for Fleeb Fleeb says:

      May be due to licensing concerns?

    • Avatar for iLuvPSNandXBLA iLuvPSNandXBLA says:

      I agree with your comment. These companies simply pick up those cheap games because they are afraid to invest big money. Remember, “a successful business is something that is not afraid to invest”.

      Anyway, in terms of online gaming, I envy Japan because they’ve got some big online games there. Monster Hunter Frontier, an RPG made by Capcom is so popular in Japan since the introduction of Monster Hunter franchise in the PS2.

      We want bigger and better online games here in the Philippines…so please stop picking low-quality games!

  18. Avatar for Chalaga Chalaga says:

    Ma-mamatay na kasi ang online games sa pinas pag di sila kikilos ng kung ano anong raket. :)

  19. Avatar for Epstein Epstein says:

    Whoah!!! That is all I can say.

  20. Avatar for Paul Paul says:

    PLDT’s Netgames division got merged into LUG too a few years back. It does seem like the local MMO gaming scene has peaked as most people would rather play casual games on Facebook or some iPhone/iPod games instead of those dungeon and level grinding timesinks.

    The merged company will probably be called as simply Level Up!, but imagine if it kept all the previous names… Level Up E-Netgames! :)

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