Big Viking Games

Big Viking Games is a Canadian independent video game development company co-founded by Greg Thomson and Albert Lai in 2011. The company focuses on the development of web-based, Facebook, and mobile video games. Their games follow a freemium software model.

Big Viking Games
Private
IndustryVideo games
PredecessorTall Tree Games
Founded2011
FoundersAlbert Lai, Greg Thomson
Headquarters
London, Ontario
,
Canada
Websitebigvikinggames.com

History

Big Viking Games was founded in 2011 by serial entrepreneur Albert Lai (co-founder of Kontagent, and four other companies) and game developer Greg Thomson (creator of 30+ apps with 40 million users) as a result of their mutual desire to produce bold and unique gaming experiences.[1][2] Since its inception, the studio has grown from four employees to more than 100 employees in less than five years.[3] The studio has focused on HTML5 technologies and has since developed and released 6 games.

Location

Big Viking Games currently run 2 development offices in Ontario, Canada. It runs a small Toronto office for those who want to stay in Toronto and work for the company, but most of their employees are situated in London, Ontario. Their Toronto studio, however, has doubled in size in the last couple of months.[4] In November 2016, Big Viking Games raised $22 million in funding led by Royal Bank of Canada, with participation from BDC (Business Development Bank of Canada).[5]

Games developed
  • Dark Heroes
  • Fish World
  • Monsters & Dungeons
  • SuperSpin Slots
  • Tiny Kingdoms
  • YoWorld (formerly YoVille)
  • YoWorld Mobile Companion

Acquisitions

Tall Tree Games (co-founded by Greg Thomson), creator of YoVille, had sold the game to Zynga shortly after its launch in May 2008. On January 10, 2014, Zynga revealed that YoVille will be shutting down its servers on March 31, 2014. Despite these claims, Zynga indicated that they would still be continuing the YoVille project and it will not shut down as originally intended. On April 24, 2014, Big Viking Games had revealed on their social media that they had successfully reacquired YoVille.[6] Due to copyright claims, YoVille was relaunched and rebranded as YoWorld on May 13, 2014.[7]

On January 27, 2016, Big Viking Games had announced it acquired Gallop Labs, a mobile marketing startup. Lai had said during a press release that six team members will be joining the company, representing "the majority" of Gallop's team.[8] Gallop Labs' clients included The New York Times, Accuweather and RBC Royal Bank.

Accolades

Since its launch in 2011, Big Viking Games have been widely recognized across the country and has since earned themselves several accolades as an employer:

  • Globe and Mail's Top 100 Employer (2014)
  • Canada's Top Small & Medium Employer (2014)
  • Canada's Top Employers for Young People (2014)
  • Best Workplace in Canada (2015; 7th out of 100)
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gollark: According to this, rogers has sent 3101 messages containing "lol".
gollark: Well, the percentages are more meaningful as "proportion of total activity which is just lol".
gollark: But that's counting him saying "lol" in quotes, no?
gollark: All images in Discord are routed through Discord.

References
  1. "About Big Viking Games".
  2. "Big Viking Games on LinkedIn".
  3. "Discover Big Viking Games on Crunchbase".
  4. "Canada Top 100 Employer, Big Viking Games".
  5. "HTML5 gaming studio Big Viking raises $21.75 million in funding". VentureBeat. Retrieved 2016-11-04.
  6. "Welcome to YoWorld".
  7. "YoVille game renamed to YoWorld, acquired by Big Viking Games".
  8. "Big Viking Games Acquires Mobile Marketing Startup Gallop Labs".
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