YoYo Games, developer and owner of the GameMaker: Studio engine that was used to make popular small games such as Gunpoint, Hotline Miami and Risk of Rain has been reported as having been bought out by the gambling game developer PlayTech. At first this seems a bit of an odd acquisition for them, but PlayTech also run a sideline to the business that sells development tools such as GameMaker: Studio.
GameMaker currently has over 750,000 registered developers using it for making games within and as well as having been downloaded more than four million times it's also one of the few game engines available for purchase through the Steam Store, which makes it very accessible and appealing for small indie developers.
A clause in the sale contract makes it clear that PlayTech plan to continue to support GameMaker for quite a time yet, and if the team working on it can hit certain targets set they can earn a further $5.25 million. Not bad at all.
