Ramping up its faith and investment in the future of social casino games, RealNetworks is buying Slingo Inc. for a reported $15.6 million.
According to VentureBeat, Slingo’s creator and owner Sal Falciglia invented Slingo in 1995 by fusing his favorite pastimes: slot machines and bingo.
Rob Glaser, the cofounder and acting chief executive at Seattle-based RealNetworks, couldn’t be more excited about being in business with Slingo.
“We are thrilled to have acquired Slingo, one of the most beloved products and brands in social casino gaming,” Glaser says. “We look forward to bringing Slingo – an extremely fun combination of slots and bingo – to even more fans around the world. Our team is hard at work creating even more compelling new versions of Slingo for Facebook, iPhone, iPad and Android.”
It’s not clear what this means for Zynga, which has a partnership with Slingo on a Facebook version of the popular Slingo game. Slingo also operates its own games on Slingo.com. The Slingo-Zynga game on Facebook has 4.5 million monthly players.
“Slingo has been a successful, compelling product on every major games platform over the past 15 years,” Slingo CEO Rich Roberts added after the formal announcement of the acquisition was made. “By joining forces with RealNetworks, we look forward to taking Slingo to the next level. We’re thrilled to be joining RealNetworks’ GameHouse division.”
News of the acquisition was made public at the Casual Connect game conference in San Francisco.
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