The first name that comes to mind when we talk about social games in Europe is probably Wooga. But the German-based social games publisher has a number of local competitors dispersed throughout the continent. In France, one of the names that has gotten a lot of attention is Kobojo, who is behind PyramidVille and Goobox.
Well, now there is a new kid on the block: Pretty Simple. And the company has just raised €2.5 million with Idinvest Partners (formerly AGF Private Equity) to produce 2-4 new games per year.
The company raised an initial €300K with Idinvest in April of last year. Since then, it has released MyShops on Facebook, which counts over 1.7 million monthly users. The game essentially allows players to create their own shops and interact with customers. Users can customize their shops with certain virual goods and objects- for example, a bakery can be customized with rustic shelves or a special oven. Naturally, these goods can be purchased with points accumulated by playing or bought with Facebook credits.
A majority of My Shops’ players are actually from English-speaking countries, like the US, the UK and Australia. Thus Pretty Simple seems to have a very different development strategy than that of Kobojo, who recently raised €5.3 million ($7.7 million) to go after Spanish-speaking markets in an attempt to avoid a head-on collision with US social games giant Zynga.
Pretty Simple’s 15 person team is looking at rolling out additional games later this year and recruiting an additional 10 people.
As for Idinvest, this is not the first time the fund is investing in a games company. The Paris-based firm is an investor in Kobojo, as well as eRepubliK, Curse and online poker platform Winamax.