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Keywords Studios has announced four more acquisitions this morning as the services provider aims to strengthen its position within the localisation market. Joining up with Keywords are four French audio and localisation teams.
La Marque Rose is an audio specialising in games and has been in operation since 1989. Dune Sound and partner company Around the Word are the largest French video game localisation setup with offices in Canada and Germany. They are joined by the more recently started Asrec who have previously been working with Keywords to provide French language solutions.
The combined deals are worth €6.6 million with an extra €1 million payable upon performance. The combined profit of these companies works out at around €9 million before tax. The extra €1 million will be partly paid in shares as Keywords has applied to the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) in London to create these shares.
"These acquisitions are an important milestone in the development of our Localisation and Audio Services business lines in Europe," said European managing director of Keywords Studios, Fulvio Sioli. "While the trend for game developers and publishers to increasingly source all languages from a single provider is clear, some clients continue to want to transact separately for individual languages. This is still most prevalent for those regarded as pillar languages of which French is probably still the most important. The combination of La Marque Rose, Dune Sound, Around the Word and Asrec with our existing Keywords studio, gives us a leading share of this games production work."
As part of this acquisition, Keywords Studios also intendeds to invest heavily back into the French market, with an increase in demand for French language localisation. New recording facilities are going to be built to service this demand.
"We look forward to welcoming the teams at La Marque Rose, Dune Sound, Around the Word and Asrec into the Keywords family," added Sioli. "We see this as the beginning of the next chapter in the market for French audio production, localisation and related media. Having such talented audio and localisation professionals pooling their expertise for the benefits of so many of the world’s leading video games is exciting to see."
