Rovio Animation
 |
|
|
Formerly called
|
|
|---|---|
| Private | |
| Industry | Video game industry |
| Founded | 10 November 2003 in Helsinki, Finland |
| Founders |
|
| Headquarters | Keilaniemi, Espoo, Finland |
|
Key people
|
Kati Levoranta (CEO) |
| Products |
|
| Revenue | €190 million (2017) |
| €26.9 million (2013) | |
| Owner | Kaj Hed (70%) |
|
Number of employees
|
435 (2013) |
| Divisions | |
| Subsidiaries | Futuremark Games Studio |
| Website | rovio |
Rovio Entertainment Ltd. (formerly Relude and later Rovio Mobile) is a Finnish developer, publisher, distributor of video games and is an entertainment company headquartered in Espoo, Finland. The company was founded in 2003 as a mobile game development studio. The company is best known for creating the Angry Birds franchise.
In 2003, three students from Helsinki University of Technology (currently Aalto University School of Science), Niklas Hed, Jarno Väkeväinen and Kim Dikert, participated in a mobile game development competition at the Assembly demo party sponsored by Nokia and HP. A victory with a multiplayer game called King of the Cabbage World led the trio, along with Niklas Hed's cousin Mikael Hed, to set up their own company, Relude. King of the Cabbage World was sold to Sumea (now known as Sumea Studios as part of Digital Chocolate), and renamed to Mole War, which became one of the first commercial real-time multiplayer mobile games. In January 2005, Relude received its first round of investment from a business angel, and the company changed its name to Rovio Mobile, which means pyre in Finnish.
In 2009, Mikael Hed became the CEO. In December 2009, Rovio released Angry Birds, its 52nd game, a puzzle game where a bird is flung using a slingshot for the iPhone; it reached No. 1 spot in the Apple App Store paid apps chart after six months, and remained charted for months after.Angry Birds has since been downloaded over 1 billion times, with paid downloads accounting for more than 25% of total downloads, making it one of the top selling games in the Apple App Store.
...
Wikipedia