Lemon Sky Studios, the leading Southeast Asian gaming studio, has been fully acquired by iCandy Interactive Limited at a price of MYR135 million. Due to this acquisition, iCandy’s existing capabilities will gain strategic value and significant scale. With over 450 workers and annual revenue of MYR51.63 million (US$12.36 million), it will be the largest pure-play game production firm on the Australian Stock Exchange, as well as in Australia and Southeast Asia.
Concurrent with the acquisition, iCandy has also announced that it has raised MYR 121.55 million (US$29.1 million) from institutional investors via a placement that is heavily oversubscribed.
The core businesses of iCandy Interactive are game development, game publishing, and Esports. The company is a co-founder of the Esports Players League (ESPL), a worldwide Esports league and platform that is rapidly expanding throughout 17 nations in Southeast Asia, South Asia, Latin America, and Europe.
iCandy Interactive and Lemon Sky will be a leading powerhouse in producing casual and AAA games on bloc thanks to tremendous interest and well-regarded growth in gaming led by the metaverse concept. The metaverse is a virtual world where millions of people can work and play as it is made with cutting-edge technology that includes Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and video and gaming.
Being the world-renowned, award-winning animation studio, Lemon Sky Studios has a history of releasing AAA gaming titles like Overwatch 2, Call of Duty – Infinite Warfare, to SimCity, Diablo 3, StarCraft: Remastered and many more. In addition, they had collaborated with some of the biggest gaming industry like Blizzard, 2K Games, EA entertainment and many others. In 2020, The global video game industry is estimated to be worth MYR 651.40 billion (US$155.95 billion) and it was believed to expand at a rapid pace as it dominates 49% of the APAC region.
“Lemon Sky Studios is a phenomenal acquisition and an excellent addition to iCandy Interactive. We now have this unparalleled capability in the region, we will focus a fair bit of our newly gained superpower to make high-quality games for the metaverse, arguably the most important development for the gaming world.” says Kin W. Lau, Chairman of iCandy Interactive.
“Collaborative partnerships in the creative industry are pertinent to keeping things fresh and innovative. We are positive that this merger will encourage creative working methods and bring about new ideas. We are extremely excited about the possibilities that lie ahead,” said Cheng-Fei Wong, CEO of Lemon Sky Studios.
