Type Subsidiary of Playtech Headquarters Dundee, United Kingdom Number of employees 25–50 | Founded 2007 Parent organization Playtech | |
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Industry Software
Games Development Genre Game Engine IDE
Desktop, Mobile and Web Key people Sandy Duncan
Mike Dailly
Russell Kay Products GameMaker
Cross-platform Game development technology Video games Mr. Karoshi, Maddening Relapse, Karoshi, greenTech+ Profiles | ||
Gamemaker studio for newcomers for professionals for everyone
YoYo Games Ltd. is a software and game publishing company based in Dundee, Scotland. It is best known for developing the proprietary, game development IDE, GameMaker for Windows which can compile cross-platform, originally created by Mark Overmars. On 16 February 2015 the company announced that it had been purchased by Playtech for £10.65 million (16.4 million USD).
Contents
History
On 26 January 2007, Mark Overmars announced his partnership with a company based in Dundee, Scotland called YoYo Games. The company, headed by CEO Sandy Duncan (ex Vice President of Xbox Europe), was founded to support the future development of GameMaker and to build a community for developers and casual gamers who could upload their games to the website.
The company established its European office in Dundee in May 2010 by opening an office within Abertay University with two team members. The company currently employs more than 25 employees. YoYo Games has announced plans to create an additional 25 positions, over the next 18 months, in systems development, software engineering, sales and customer service. The employees will be hired to help the company keep pace with the rapid evolution of the global games market and demand for Game Maker: Studio. To accommodate this expansion, in June 2013, YoYo Games moved from its old location within Abertay University into new office space on Dundee’s Waterfront redevelopment. On 16 February 2015 it was announced that Playtech acquired YoYo Games for £10.65 million (USD$16.4 million).
Digital rights management
In late 2012/early 2013, YoYo Games released a version of their Studio IDE for cross-platform development that would import games and destroy all of the image type resources for some legitimate purchasers of the software by superimposing a pirate symbol on top of the image. This was due to a fault in their Digital Rights Management software implementation which they use as a method of combating infringing copies of the software. YoYoGames publicly stated they would remove the DRM at a later point in time, but that other less-invasive DRM techniques would remain.