Keywords Studios acquires Liquid Development for $9m

Dublin-based tech firm Keywords Studios has acquired video game art service company Liquid Development for $9 million.

Keywords Studios provides technical services to the video games industry, and the addition of Liquid will beef up its game development services and give the firm early entry to the cycle of games creation.

The deal will see the founders of US-based Liquid – Darren Bartlett, creative director Stefan Henry-Biskup and chief executive Fred Stockton – paid $6.3 million in cash, with the remainder of the purchase price in shares. They will remain with the company after the acquisition is complete.

Mr Stockton sad the deal was an important part of Liquid’s growth and development, and would allow the firm to expand the scope of its services.

Liquid's clients include 343 Industries, Warner Bros, EA and Microsoft Game Studios. The company is expected to post revenues of $7.5 million and pretax profit of $1.5 million for the year to December 31st 2015.

"The acquisition of Liquid Development significantly increases the scale of our art services business line, giving us greater penetration of this large and strongly growing market as well as increased access to this early entry point in the video games development cycle," said Andrew Day, chief executive of Keywords.

“We have already seen how our newly opened art studio in Seattle is able to act as a ‘front end’ for art production in our Indian studios and we look forward to accelerating this model with Liquid Development.”

Keywords has been on the expansion trail recently, targeting a mixture of both organic and growth by acquisition. In October 2014, it bought Indian art production firm Lakshya for $4 million.