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Keywords Studios is opening a new Electric Square office in Singapore

Keywords Studios is opening a new Electric Square office in Singapore

Tech giant Keywords Studios has expanded into Singapore with a new Electric Square office.

This new outfit has 13 employees at the moment, with the firm set to expand that figure to 50 by 2022. 

This follows Keywords acquisition of Brighton's Studio Gobo and that company's Electric Square subsidiary, which is based in Leamington Spa, last year for $33.5m. The games giant also has in multi-national work-for-hire outfit Sperasoft, which Keywords bought for $27m, and Scotland's d3t, which cost the company $3.9m, in its development business. 

Through the expansion, Keywords can offer five of its seven services from the area - game development, functionality QA, localisation, localisation QA and player support.

"We’re delighted to expand the Electric Square family. Singapore is a major player in the region for game development," said Electric Square studio head Julien Girard-Buttoz.

"The innovation and training ecosystem, the experience and talent of local developers and Singapore’s desirability as a location for attracting talent from all over the world, position Electric Square in the ideal environment to grow and deliver world-class content and experiences.”

Electric Square head of studios Jon Gibson added: "Opening the Singapore studio has been an important milestone in the growth of Electric Square. There’s a shortage of experienced developers in the industry, so in order to recruit top talent we wanted to establish a presence in the world’s leading gaming hubs.

"We have studios in Brighton and Leamington Spa, two of the UK’s leading development communities, so Singapore was a logical next step, being a leading light for game development talent and services in Asia.”

In December 2019, Keywords made three acquisitions - Kantan, Ichi Holdings and Syllabes - to expand its marketing, translation and audio businesses.

Last year, the company expanded its foothold in Poland and Mexico. A new recording studio was opened in Sao Paulo in July 2019. Further acquisitions in 2019 included audio description firm Descriptive Video Works and Wizcorp.

We caught up with CEO Andrew Day at GDC last year to discuss Keywords' acquisition strategy, with the company having around $114m to play with at that point in time


Staff Writer

Kayleigh is the Staff Writer for PocketGamer.biz. Besides PGbiz and PCGI she has written as a list writer for Game Rant, rambling about any and all things games related. You can also find her on Twitter talking utter nonsense.