Leamington games publisher makes first ever purchase of another company as part of its continuing expansion

Leamington-based games publisher Kwalee has continued to go from strength to strength with the purchase of a highly successful French studio.

Kwalee, which has a headquarters in Southam Road, has achieved more than 750 million downloads across its games portfolio.

The deal to buy Tictales, which is based in Guignes, is the first acquisition by Kwalee in its ten-year history.

Kwalee CEO David Darling said: "With their successful track record of casual mobile games and ability to tell a compelling story through their games, their ambitions match our own and we’re looking forward to building collective success.”

Tictales has developed and published 14 games since it was founded in 2015 including Perfume of Love, Fictions and Swiit Crush - Interactive Stories.

The company specialises in free-to-play romance narrative games, and its titles have been well received globally.

Christophe Chocho, sales manager and co-founder of Tictales, said: "We and Kwalee share the same philosophy about high-quality games and we cannot wait to show our exciting new projects to the world.”

Kwalee has doubled in size over the past year thanks to rapid global expansion.

The developer and publisher also has offices in Bangalore in India and Beijing in China along with remote team members all around the world.

With the acquisition of Tictales, the company now has team members spread across 18 countries.