Leading video game developer Jagex acquires Gamepires with legal counsel from Wolf Theiss

Zagreb, 19 December 2022 – Wolf Theiss acted as legal advisor to Jagex, the leading developer and publisher of community-driven games, backed by global investment firm Carlyle (NASDAQ: CG), in relation to its acquisition of Gamepires, a highly successful game development studio of 50+ experienced developers best known for its open world survival title SCUM.

Founded in 2010, Gamepires is an independent developer based in Zagreb, Croatia. The company launched SCUM to great critical and community success in 2018 with over 3 million copies sold and a consistent place in Steam’s Top 100 most played games. Gamepires’ and Jagex’s community-driven approach will enable SCUM to realise its full potential with a multi-platform 1.0 release in the future.

Jagex, known for the success of its RuneScape franchise, will use its deep expertise in community-driven games and its platform as an international publisher to accelerate SCUM as a leading open world survival title. Through acquisitions and third-party publishing, Jagex continues to leverage its expertise to create an industry leading family of community-driven studios and live service games.

Wolf Theiss provided legal assistance to Jagex on all aspects of the Gamepires acquisition, from the legal due diligence phase, structuring and negotiation of transaction documents, to the successful completion of the transaction. The Wolf Theiss team was led by Luka Tadic-Colic (Partner, Corporate/M&A), who was further assisted by Marija Lalin (Associate, Corporate/M&A). For the acquisition governed by English law, Wolf Theiss involved Richard Clegg (Partner, Corporate/M&A) from the Wolf Theiss office in Sofia, as well as the team in Budapest for certain aspects relating to Hungarian operations of Gamepires.

In addition to the legal counsel of Wolf Theiss, Jagex was also assisted by KPMG as its financial and tax advisor.

About Jagex

A leader in creating deep and engaging live games on PC and mobile, Jagex’s flagship MMORPG, RuneScape, has welcomed over 300 million player accounts to its world and is a $1 billion lifetime revenue franchise. Jagex employs more than 450 people at its Cambridge headquarters. Jagex expanded its community-focused group of game studios with the acquisition of Pipeworks earlier in 2022. Jagex Partners are the third-party publishing arm of Jagex, focusing on developers of community-driven games.