Improbable acquires Nottingham-based multiplayer services company, The Multiplayer Guys

Games tech company Improbable has acquired multiplayer games services company, The Multiplayer Guys, for an undisclosed sum.

Despite the acquisition – which sees The Multiplayer Guys become a wholly-owned, independently-operated subsidiary of Improbable – the company will “maintain their current focus on supporting their current and future customers in delivering great multiplayer experiences, using a wide range of services, best practices and industry-standard tools”, as well as “providing fully scalable server/client architecture, synchronous and asynchronous peer-to-peer networking, live operations and other services”.  

“Improbable’s goal is to pioneer and practice new, better ways to approach multiplayer game development using next-generation tools like SpatialOS,” said Herman Narula, CEO and co-founder of Improbable. “But multiplayer development has many challenges, and by expanding the services that we offer we can help more developers to achieve greater results with their multiplayer games.  

“The Multiplayer Guys have shown their ability to help studios large and small deliver better multiplayer experiences faster. We’re delighted to add The Multiplayer Guys’ skill and experience to the services we offer.”

“Considering the growth and success that we’ve been experiencing, we weren’t looking to join a larger company, but no company is pioneering advances in multiplayer game development like Improbable,” added Rik Alexander, CEO and co-founder of the Multiplayer Guys. “We will continue to offer our current services without any disruption, but with Improbable’s scale and engineering support we can continue our phenomenal growth rate while also working smarter, and bring new, experienced teams of multiplayer specialists online to serve more customers faster.”

Nottingham firm The Multiplayer Guys recently announced two new senior hires: senior software engineers Anis Refoufi and Chris Applegarth. The new appointments are the latest in a number of additions that have seen the company purportedly increase its headcount six-fold since January 2019. 

The specialist outsource company has seen a 475 per cent growth since the start of the year, with other appointments including software engineers Alejandro Aguilar, Daniel Novillo, Amerigo Moscaroli, and Tom Avison, all of whom “are putting their significant experience into another major international client’s core tech team”.

Improbable also recently acquired Midwinter Entertainment, developer of the upcoming online action-shooter, Scavengers. The Seattle-based team – led by former Halo franchise creative director and 343 Industries studio lead, Josh Holmes – will be joining Improbable’s other studios in London, UK, and Edmonton, Canada, and retain creative independence “while benefiting from closer technical and organisational integration with SpatialOS”.

“This acquisition is the culmination of a mutually beneficial partnership between Improbable and Midwinter,” says a press release. “Midwinter brings to Improbable a high calibre of technical expertise and significant experience developing for AAA games. Their continued contribution to Improbable’s core technology, SpatialOS, will now be streamlined, joining Improbable’s other internal studios in furthering the platform, making it a more useful tool for independent game developers and studios building multiplayer games.”