Sega Nears Deal to Acquire Angry Birds Maker Rovio for $1 billion

Sega is reportedly close to buying Rovio Entertainment — the company that owns the Angry Birds mobile game franchise — for a whopping $1 billion. According to The Wall Street Journal, Sega may lock in the big deal with Angry Birds Maker Rovio by early next week.

It’s surprising to think why Sega is spending so much on Rovio despite the decline in popularity of the Angry Birds games. The original game was a smashing success in 2009. However, the franchise has clearly fallen off since its 2014 peak, when Rovio reported falling profits and layoffs.

Sega Nears Deal to Acquire Angry Birds Maker Rovio for $1 Billion

In 2016, Rovio tried a movie adaptation, The Angry Birds Movie, which was a box office success and is still the seventh highest-grossing video game movie. Its 2019 sequel, The Angry Birds Movie 2, did not achieve the same success. On the other hand, Candy Crush, a big competitor, grew more and more.

Recently, Rovio also removed its original Angry Birds game from the Google Play Store. However, it renamed the iOS version to Red’s First Flight. The move was done seemingly to move players over to its lucrative freemium sequels and obscure the buy once and play forever business model of the original game.

Rovio previously neared an $800 million deal for Israeli developer Playtika to take over However, those talks officially declined in March. Now, Sega might soon own the Finland-based Angry Birds company instead.

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