The Carlyle Group acquires Jagex

Global investment firm The Carlyle Group has announced it has acquired Jagex, a leading developer and publisher of video games. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Headquartered in Cambridge, UK, and employing more than 450 people, Jagex is one of the largest and most successful British video game studios, developing and publishing video games on PC and mobile. The company is best known for its online role-playing living game franchise RuneScape, which has attracted almost 300million player accounts since its launch 20 years ago. Jagex has grown its RuneScape titles to a $1billion franchise (total revenue since inception). The titles, which are played by a vibrant community of millions all around the world, are currently enjoying peak global popularity. 2020 saw record numbers of subscribing players, more than half of which are in the United States.

The Carlyle Group is one of the world’s largest and most diversified global investment firms with $230billion of assets under management. Carlyle will leverage its global network, expertise and resources to support Jagex as it continues to drive growth by evolving the core RuneScape franchise through investment in R&D and increased content release rates, as well as launching new titles to diversify its portfolio and engage with an even wider community of players. Equity for the investment was provided by Carlyle Partners (CP) VII and Carlyle Europe Technology Partners (CETP) IV funds.

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