Kabam (formerly Watercooler, Inc.) is a Canadian video game developer and publisher founded in 2006 and headquartered in Vancouver, with offices in Montreal, San Francisco, and Austin, Texas. The company develops and publishes massively multiplayer social games such as Marvel Contest of Champions and Transformers: Forged to Fight for mobile devices. Before expanding into gaming, Kabam established itself as a social applications developer with focusing on entertainment and sports.
The company has focused on developing "real games," or games with immersive gameplay mechanics akin to more traditional MMOs with an emphasis on the spending and gambling of virtual currency. In late 2009, Kabam launched Kingdoms of Camelot, one of the first successful strategy games on Facebook, but in June 2010, the number of players began constantly shrinking.[1] In April 2015, Kabam announced a shift in its focus to developing AAA mobile games.[2]
History
Kabam was founded in 2006 as Watercooler by Kevin Chou, Michael Li, Holly Liu, and Wayne Chan, the company started off focused on building community apps for sports and entertainment fans, amassing more than 25 million users on Facebook and other social networks.[3] In October 2009 Watercooler, secured $5.5 million in Series B funding from Betfair, the world's largest Internet betting exchange, and Canaan Partners, which participated in the company's Series A funding in 2007.[4] On November 2, 2009, Watercooler, launched Kingdoms of Camelot on Facebook.[5]
On August 3, 2010, Watercooler changed its name to Kabam.[6]
On September 19, 2012, CEO Kevin Chou announced that Kabam was considering an IPO.[7] A secondary stock sale was agreed at the end of 2013 which valued the company at $700 million, it was also announced at this time that four of its games – led by Kingdoms of Camelot – grossed more than $100 million, with $360 million in revenues for 2013.[8]
In June 2014, Kabam hired former EA Mobile VP Aaron Loeb as Senior Vice President of its North American Studios (San Francisco and Vancouver). While at EA Mobile, he worked on The Simpsons: Tapped Out and Monopoly Slots. Kabam hoped he would provide a link to Hollywood studios.[9] Also in June, Kabam shut down servers for The Hobbit: Armies of the Third Age.[10]
Alibaba announced in July 2014 that it planned to invest $120 million in Kabam, giving the company a $1 billion valuation. This allowed its games to be distributed through Alibaba's apps, including Mobile Taobao and the Laiwang messaging app.[11]
In April 2015, Kabam switched its focus to developing AAA mobile games. As a result, several Kabam games were shut down, older Kabam games transferred to other companies and Kabam support for third-party games decreased.[2]
On August 13, 2015, Machine Zone, maker of Game of War: Fire Age, sued Kabam for trade secret theft.[12] The conflict was resolved to both companies' satisfaction on September 10.[13]
On September 10, 2015, Kabam, Disney Interactive, and Lucasfilm released Star Wars: Uprising. In September 2015, Nick Earl, president of worldwide studios, resigned. Mike Verdu was promoted to president of Kabam Studios and chief creative officer in charge of the publisher's game design and game quality. Aaron Loeb was promoted to president of Kabam Studios and live services, in charge of service quality.[14]
On January 7, 2016, Kabam announced it had sold its legacy games and third-party-published games to Chinese publisher GAEA Mobile.[15] After the downsizing in April 2015, Kabam shut down several older games that were not transferred.
On February 22, 2016, Kabam laid off 8 percent of its company workforce. Kevin Chou, Kabam's chief executive, said in an interview with GamesBeat that the company would focus on free-to-play massively multiplayer mobile games such as its then-current hits, Marvel Contest of Champions and Star Wars: Uprising, putting less emphasis on single-player games such as Fast & Furious.[16] On June 23, 2016, Kabam announced that they would be selling Realm of the Mad God to DECA Games.
In July 2016, Kabam announced that Marvel Contest of Champions hit $100 million in gross revenue in seven months, the fastest of any game in the company's history (The Hobbit was next fastest at 13 months). In November 2016, Kabam appointed Jeff Howell to the newly created position of Chief Technology Officer.
In August 2016, Kabam partnered with Hasbro to develop Transformers: Forged to Fight. The title was released on April 5, 2017. The game was shut down in January 2023 but was remade available to Netflix members in May 2023.[17]
As of March 1, 2017, Kabam was acquired by Netmarble.[18] At this time, Tim Fields took over as CEO.
On August 17, 2020, Kabam released Marvel Realm of Champions, a spin-off of Marvel Contest of Champions. That game would go on to shut down on March 31, 2022.[19]
On January 17, 2022, Kabam announced that Seungwon Lee from Netmarble would assume the role of CEO at Kabam.[20] The company later released Disney Mirrorverse, a Disney crossover mobile role-playing game, on June 23, 2022.
Transferred to RockYou and supported by RockYou as of the beginning of April 2015, though Kabam still hosts the game and Kabam Rewards still apply to the game.[31]
Transferred to RockYou and supported by RockYou as of the beginning of April 2015, though Kabam still hosts the game and Kabam Rewards still apply to the game.[31]
15.
Battle Punks
Facebook
Gravity Bear Studio
No
2010/03/02
2012/03
Date is for beta release, server unresponsiveness by March 2012 was not announced and remains unresolved
Transferred to RockYou and supported by RockYou as of the beginning of April 2015, though Kabam still hosts the game and Kabam Rewards still apply to the game.[31]
Transferred to RockYou and supported by RockYou as of the beginning of April 2015, though Kabam still hosts the game and Kabam Rewards still apply to the game.[31]
28.
The Godfather: Five Families
Facebook, Kongregate, Web
Kabam
No
2011/09/07
2019/02
Date is for beta release. Transferred to RockYou and supported by RockYou as of the beginning of April 2015, though Kabam still hosts the game and Kabam Rewards still apply to the game.[31]
Kabam published mobile versions of the game on September 2, 2014, but the different versions were never cross-platform compatible. The mobile versions stopped working by January 2015 and Kabam forum support ended on February 9, 2015.[66]
After limited releases in Canada,[68] Denmark and Sweden,[69] a beta was launched on Steam in early March[70] with Early Access on May 27[71] before Jeff Strain, founder of Undead Labs, announced the game's closure.[67] Android and iOS were the original planned platforms for the worldwide release, but the Android version was never released as the game closed while in beta.
Yahoo! version of the game was shut down on March 31, 2014, and progress transfer to other versions of the game was not possible.[73]
Notes:
Release date denotes when a game is first available to play, including closed and open beta releases.
For games that are developed by other studios and distributed by Kabam, the shutdown date is when Kabam discontinued their support of the games. Those games may still be distributed by other publishers, or available to play on servers hosted by companies other than Kabam.
