Venture capital firm Insight Venture Partners paid £75m ($115m) to increase its stake in UK-based games developer Jagex to 55% last year, buying out several long term staff including co-founder Andrew Gower, according to the news provider Sunday Times, which cites documents filed at UK company registrar Companies House.
Insight originally acquired a 35% stake in Jagex, in 2005, before returning for a round in February last year which also saw investment by boutique merchant bank Raine Group (which currently holds a 15% stake) and private equity firm Spectrum Equity Partners (about 18%).
Now the largest independent games company in the UK, Jagex sprung to prominence with its first major release, Runescape, in 2001. Runescape remains the world’s most popular free Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) with over 156 million active accounts.
After concentrating on Runescape for the first few years of its existence, Jagex has since diversified its output, releasing casual browser-based games on its FunOrb website, and a Massively Multiplayer Online strategy-based game, War of Legends.
Jagex’s published financial figures leading up to March 2011 show the company making a net profit of about $10.3m from revenues of $69.5m.