Interestingly though, given its new parent company, one of Plarium's very early mobile titles is social casino game PlaySlots. The MMO remains the genre in whch it works most, but since 2013 its focus has shifted almost entirely to mobile.

So what did Aristocrat see in Plarium that made it worth splashing out $500 million on, in the process straying significantly from its established business?įounded in 2009, Plarium started out developing browser-based MMOs. This deal, which establishes the firm as a direct competitor to Machine Zone with 4X strategy games like Vikings: War of Clans, is rather more so. But that move from physical casino games to virtual ones was not altogether surprising. This isn't the coin-op machine manufacturer's first foray into the mobile space, having picked up social casino developer Product Madness back in 2012. Australian casino outfit Aristocrat recently paid $500 million to acquire Israeli mobile game developer Plarium.