Ketchapp SARL is a French

video game publisher A video game publisher is a company that publishes video games that have been developed either internally by the publisher or externally by a video game developer. They often finance the development, sometimes by paying a video game developer ( ...

based in

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

, specializing in the

mobile game A mobile game, or smartphone game, is a video game that is typically played on a mobile phone. The term also refers to all games that are played on any portable device, including from mobile phone (feature phone or smartphone), tablet, PDA to ...

s market. Founded in 2014 by brothers Antoine and Michel Morcos, the company first came into the public eye later that year, through its port of the open-source game '' 2048''. Ketchapp has been accused of cloning popular

casual game A casual game is a video game targeted at a mass market audience, as opposed to a hardcore game, which is targeted at hobbyist gamers. Casual games may exhibit any type of gameplay and genre. They generally involve simpler rules, shorter sessio ...

s by other developers. When Ketchapp was acquired by

Ubisoft Ubisoft Entertainment SA (; ; formerly Ubi Soft Entertainment SA) is a French video game publisher headquartered in Saint-Mandé with development studios across the world. Its video game franchises include '' Assassin's Creed'', ''Far Cry'', '' ...

in September 2016, the company had more than 700 million downloads across their portfolio of games.

History

Ketchapp was founded by brothers Antoine and Michel Morcos in 2014 in

. In March 2014, the company

cloned Cloning is the process of producing individual organisms with identical or virtually identical DNA, either by natural or artificial means. In nature, some organisms produce clones through asexual reproduction. In the field of biotechnology, c ...

Gabriele Cirulli's

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

puzzle game A puzzle is a game, problem, or toy that tests a person's ingenuity or knowledge. In a puzzle, the solver is expected to put pieces together ( or take them apart) in a logical way, in order to arrive at the correct or fun solution of the puzzle ...

'' 2048'' and published it as an

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...

app, with advertising and

in-app purchase Microtransactions, often abbreviated as mtx, are a business model where users can purchase virtual goods with micropayments. Microtransactions are often used in free-to-play games to provide a revenue source for the developers. While microtransact ...

s. It eventually reached the top of the iOS

App Store An App Store (or app marketplace) is a type of digital distribution platform for computer software called applications, often in a mobile context. Apps provide a specific set of functions which, by definition, do not include the running of the co ...

charts. Ketchapp became successful by adapting ideas from other popular apps, with many of its releases being variations on existing games, such as reworking the popular 2013 game ''

Flappy Bird ''Flappy Bird'' is a mobile game developed by the Vietnamese video game artist and programmer Dong Nguyen ( vi, Nguyễn Hà Đông), under his game development company .Gears. The game is a side-scroller where the player controls a bird, attemp ...

'' as ''Run Bird Run''. In February 2015, the company released the scrolling reaction game ''ZigZag'', which was praised for not being a clone of an existing game, however, in April 2015, developer Mudloop accused Ketchapp that ''ZigZag'' was a version of their game, ''Zig Zag Boom'', that was submitted to but rejected by Ketchapp, and published under a different title without credit. Mudloop later stated that they had learned that their submission of ''Zig Zag Boom'' to Ketchapp post-dated Ketchapp having a working version of ''ZigZag''. In 2016, Christian Calderon joined Ketchapp as chief revenue officer. As of November 2017, Ketchapp has released 137 games, including ''Jelly Jump''. On 27 September 2016, French video game publisher

announced that they had acquired Ketchapp. On 16 May 2017, Ketchapp released a

fidget spinner A fidget spinner is a toy that consists of a ball bearing in the center of a multi-lobed (typically two or three) flat structure made from metal or plastic designed to spin along its axis with pressure. Fidget spinners became trending toys in 2 ...

-themed game, titled simply ''Fidget Spinner'' and developed by Estoty. The app received seven million downloads in the first two weeks after it was released, as a result of which Ketchapp set up a Fanfiber store to sell

limited edition The terms special edition, limited edition, and variants such as deluxe edition, or collector's edition, are used as a marketing incentive for various kinds of products, originally published products related to the arts, such as books, prints, r ...

Ketchapp-branded fidget spinners.

References

External links

* {{Ubisoft Companies based in Paris Mobile game companies Ubisoft divisions and subsidiaries Video game companies of France Video game development companies Video game companies established in 2014 2016 mergers and acquisitions French companies established in 2014