Zynga Closes Acquisition of Mobile Game Developer StarLark; Expands Game Portfolio With Hit Franchise, Golf Rival
7.10.2021 15:00:00 EEST | Business Wire | Press release
Zynga Inc. (Nasdaq: ZNGA), a global leader in interactive entertainment, today announced it has closed the acquisition of StarLark, developer of the fast-growing and second largest mobile golf game in the world, Golf Rival, from Betta Games for a total purchase price of approximately $525 million in cash and stock.
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211007005016/en/
Zynga Closes Acquisition of Mobile Game Developer StarLark; Expands Game Portfolio with Hit Franchise, Golf Rival (Graphic: Business Wire)
StarLark brings to Zynga the talented development team behind the hit mobile game, Golf Rival, where players of all skill levels compete in real-time player-versus-player matches, including multiplayer tournaments on spectacular courses with customizable equipment. The acquisition also expands Zynga’s international presence by establishing a new China-based studio with access to the region’s creative talent pool. StarLark will continue to be led by its Founder and General Manager, Henry You, and its current management team. StarLark has additional projects in development.
“We could not be more pleased to welcome StarLark’s extraordinarily accomplished team to Zynga,” said Frank Gibeau, Chief Executive Officer of Zynga. “StarLark and Zynga share a common vision – to bring people together through games. With Golf Rival, we are expanding Zynga’s portfolio with a new hit franchise and are establishing a developer presence in China, a country with unparalleled technical and creative talent. As a combined team, we are well positioned to grow faster together.”
“StarLark shares a common passion with Zynga for uniting mobile gamers from anywhere in the world. By partnering with Zynga, we will have access to the company’s extensive global resources and expertise, while continuing to develop new and exciting content for players,” said Henry You, StarLark Founder and General Manager. “We are thrilled to embark on the next chapter of our journey with Zynga, a global leader in mobile gaming.”
The close of this acquisition is effective as of October 5, 2021. Zynga expects to update its full year 2021 guidance when reporting its Q3 2021 financial results on Monday, November 8.
Editor’s note:
Key art and broadcast assets are available for use at the following link: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/89wkhslxyahx40b/AACLP9FV4kja4SDozzWJCXLya?dl=0
About Zynga Inc.
Zynga is a global leader in interactive entertainment with a mission to connect the world through games. With a massive global reach in more than 175 countries and regions, Zynga has a diverse portfolio of popular game franchises that have been downloaded more than four billion times on mobile, including CSR Racing™, Empires & Puzzles™, Hair Challenge™, Harry Potter: Puzzles & Spells™, High Heels!™, Merge Dragons!™, Merge Magic!™, Queen Bee™, Toon Blast™, Toy Blast™, Words With Friends™ and Zynga Poker™. With Chartboost, a leading mobile advertising and monetization platform, Zynga is an industry-leading next-generation platform with the ability to optimize programmatic advertising and yields at scale. Founded in 2007, Zynga is headquartered in California with locations in North America, Europe and Asia. For more information, visit www.zynga.com or follow Zynga on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook or the Zynga blog.
Forward Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including those statements relating to, among other things: our ability to achieve the intended benefits of our acquisition of Beijing StarLark Technology Co., Ltd. (“StarLark)” and the Golf Rival mobile game franchise, including the growth of the Golf Rival franchise, the development of future games, and attracting and retaining key development and other personnel. Forward-looking statements often include words such as “projected,” “planned,” “intend,” “will,” “anticipate,” “believe,” “target,” “expect,” and statements in the future tense are generally forward-looking. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and reflect management’s current expectations. The achievement or success of the matters covered by such forward-looking statements involves significant risks, uncertainties, and assumptions, and our actual results could differ materially from those predicted or implied. Undue reliance should not be placed on such forward-looking statements, which are based on information available to us on the date hereof. We assume no obligation to update such statements. More information about these risks, uncertainties, and assumptions and additional factors that could cause actual results to differ are or will be described in greater detail in our public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”), copies of which may be obtained by visiting our Investor Relations website at http://investor.zynga.com or the SEC’s web site at www.sec.gov.
To view this piece of content from cts.businesswire.com, please give your consent at the top of this page.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211007005016/en/
Contact information
Investor Relations:
Rebecca Lau
Investors@zynga.com
Media Relations:
Sarah Ross
Saross@zynga.com
About Business Wire
For more than 50 years, Business Wire has been the global leader in press release distribution and regulatory disclosure.
Subscribe to releases from Business Wire
Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Latest releases from Business Wire
Octane AI Launches Phoenix, an AI Quiz Builder That Builds, Checks and Improves Quizzes for Shopify Brands21.10.2026 20:15:00 EEST | Press release
Octane AI, the quiz and zero-party data platform for Shopify brands, launched Phoenix in October, its biggest release to date. Merchants describe the quiz they want or upload what they already have, and Phoenix builds it, checks it, personalizes the results and keeps improving it with experiments. One beta customer turned a single document into a complete product-launch quiz: “I attached it to Phoenix, and it built the whole thing, all the pages. It understood everything, not just the text but the logic behind it.” Across all live Octane AI quizzes, 15% of shoppers who finish a quiz place an order. Yet building one has meant hours of writing rules by hand, custom code for design and clicking through every path to find broken results. Phoenix handles those hard parts, from building a quiz to improving it after launch. “Since day one, we've kept track of every piece of feedback from our merchants: what frustrates them and what they wish Octane AI could do. Phoenix is the result, and it k
Cognite Earns Corporate Supplier of the Year Award from Marathon Petroleum Corporation21.10.2026 20:06:00 EEST | Press release
Cognite today announced it has been named Corporate Supplier of the Year winner in Marathon Petroleum Corporation’s 11th Annual Supplier Recognition Awards. The Supplier Recognition Awards is a program sponsored by Marathon Petroleum Corporation to honor suppliers that positively impacted the company’s business throughout the previous calendar year. “There’s a reason ‘Impact’ is one of Cognite’s most important core values,” said Girish Rishi, CEO of Cognite. “For us, the ultimate measure of our performance is delivering quantifiable value for our customers. From that perspective, the Corporate Supplier of the Year award from Marathon is particularly meaningful. Marathon Petroleum is an innovator, and to receive this recognition is a great honor to the Cognite community.” The Supplier of the Year Award from Marathon is the latest honor Cognite has received in 2026: In May, Cognite ranked 15th on CNBC’s Disruptor50 list, honoring venture-backed companies innovating across industries, exp
The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. to Webcast Capital Markets Experience: China Ecosystem Immersion Presentations on November 4, 202621.10.2026 19:48:00 EEST | Press release
The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. (NYSE: EL) today announced that it will webcast presentations from its Capital Markets Experience: China Ecosystem Immersion in Shanghai, China, on Wednesday, November 4, 2026. The event will feature presentations from Stéphane de La Faverie, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Akhil Shrivastava, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, as well as members of the Company’s Executive Leadership Team and local leaders. The presentations will highlight the Company’s strategy and capabilities in China, Beauty Reimagined in action, and how China serves as a blueprint for deploying the Company’s global capabilities to drive sustainable growth and stronger profitability. Due to limited capacity, in-person attendance is by invitation only. Interested parties can access the live webcast on Wednesday, November 4th, beginning at 1:00 p.m. China Standard Time (12:00 a.m. ET) at Investors – The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. A replay of the webcast wi
Future Health and Bridge for Billions to Launch Programme Strengthening Health Entrepreneurship in Emerging Markets21.10.2026 18:50:00 EEST | Press release
Future Health – A Global Initiative by Abu Dhabi and Bridge for Billions will launch a new entrepreneurship programme designed to strengthen promising health ventures in emerging markets and help locally-developed solutions reach more people. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20261021719421/en/ The first phase of the programme will target around 50 entrepreneurs leading late-incubation to early-acceleration ventures in Africa and Asia. Emerging markets are home to significant health needs and entrepreneurial potential, yet many promising ventures can struggle to access the capital, specialist guidance, and health-system connections required to grow. WIPO’s Global Innovation Index 2024 reported that Latin America and Africa together accounted for around 3% of global venture-capital deals in the first half of 2024, while venture-capital values fell by 19% in Asia-Pacific and 80% in Africa. At the same time, entrepre
Hephaestus Exits Stealth Having Raised $17.2M to Supply Rare-Earth-Free HTS Superconductors and Build Low-Cost Fusion Power21.10.2026 17:48:00 EEST | Press release
Hephaestus today emerged from stealth with solutions that address two of the largest cost drivers in fusion power: the high temperature superconducting (HTS) magnets that confine the plasma, and the edge-localized modes (ELMs – major plasma instabilities) that drive up the cost and complexity of conventional reactor designs. The company also announced the close of a new funding round led by CiRi Ventures. Hephaestus was founded in London in 2019 with a single mission – to help make fusion energy cheap enough to compete on the grid. Its AI plasma solver initially swept the full space of tokamak design parameters, unconstrained by the legacy designs and materials much of the industry is already committed to, and identified negative triangularity (NT), which inverts the D-shaped plasma used in most tokamaks, as the most likely configuration for low-cost fusion energy. Subsequent results from facilities worldwide, including the DIII-D, JET, and SMART, have shown that NT can deliver strong
In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.
Visit our pressroom