Big Fish Games is a casual gaming company based in

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

, with a regional office in Oakland, California, owned by

Aristocrat Leisure Aristocrat Leisure Limited is an Australian gambling machine manufacturer, which has its administrative and research headquarters in the Sydney suburb of North Ryde. It has marketing and development offices in South Africa, Russia, and the Uni ...

. It is a developer and distributor of casual games for

computers A computer is a machine that can be programmed to carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as programs. These programs ...

and mobile devices. It has been accused of knowingly deceiving customers into signing up for monthly purchases without informed consent. It was also the subject of a

class action A class action, also known as a class-action lawsuit, class suit, or representative action, is a type of lawsuit where one of the parties is a group of people who are represented collectively by a member or members of that group. The class actio ...

lawsuit over its app ''Big Fish Casino'', resulting in a settlement of $155 million after a federal appeals court ruled that it constituted illegal online gambling.

History

The company was founded in 2002. In 2009, it announced the opening of their European headquarters in Cork, Ireland. In July 2010, the company passed one billion game downloads from its online portal. In August 2013, the company announced the closing of its cloud-based games service, Vancouver studio and Cork offices. In 2014, the company was acquired by

Churchill Downs Inc. Churchill Downs Incorporated is the parent company of Churchill Downs. The company has evolved from one racetrack in Louisville, Kentucky, to a multi American-state-wide, publicly traded company with racetracks, casinos and an online wagering comp ...

in a deal valued at up to $885 million. In 2018, Churchill Downs sold Big Fish to Australian gambling machine manufacturer

for $990 million. In September 2018, Big Fish cut 15% of its workforce, and September 2020, it cut nearly 50% of its workforce.

Big Fish Studios

Big Fish Games has a number of studios split between the Seattle office and Oakland office that develop games: Self Aware Games, Triton Studios, Epic Ventures and ARC Studios. Games developed by the various Big Fish studios include: * ''Drawn'' series: ''Dark Flight'', ''The Painted Tower'', ''Trail of Shadows'' *'' Fairway Solitaire HD'' *''

Hidden Expedition ''Hidden Expedition'' is a series of single-player hidden object casual games developed by the internal studios of Big Fish Games for the first five installments (using Big Fish Games Framework as the engine, and with the help of Flood Light Ga ...

'' series *''

Mystery Case Files ''Mystery Case Files'' is a video game series originally developed by the internal studios of Big Fish Games. Some installments were developed by Eipix Entertainment between 2015 and 2019 and Elephant Games who developed sequels from 2013 to 201 ...

'' series

Online games

The company entered browser gaming with its acquisition of the game website Ion Thunder in 2007; the service was re-branded as Atlantis following the acquisition. The service, which was later revamped as Big Sea Games in 2009, was shut down in 2010 as part of the company's shift from traditional online games to social games on

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...

and

mobile app A mobile application or app is a computer program or software application designed to run on a mobile device such as a phone, tablet, or watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop applications which are designed to run on d ...

References

External links

* {{Coord, 47.620941, N, 122.361906, W, display=title 2002 establishments in Washington (state) American companies established in 2002 Casual games Companies based in Seattle Mobile game companies Video game companies established in 2002 Video game companies of the United States Video game development companies 2014 mergers and acquisitions 2018 mergers and acquisitions American subsidiaries of foreign companies