Peak Games

Zynga paid $900 million upfront and $900 million in earnouts for a two-game portfolio generating approximately $500 million in annual revenue at acquisition — a 3.6x multiple that made perfect sense in June 2020 when mobile game M&A was peaking and looked catastrophic 18 months later when Zynga itself sold to Take-Two for less than half its pandemic valuation. Peak's founders sold at the exact top of a cycle that ended when Apple's iOS 14.5 privacy changes destroyed mobile advertising attribution in April 2021, turning every performance-marketing-dependent mobile game into a margin compression story. The acquisition was structurally identical to Zynga's own 2012 peak — a massively profitable exit for founders who understood that casual gaming franchises have shelf lives measured in product cycles not decades.

VERDICT: ZOMBIECORN — PEAK GAMES SOLD FOR $1.8B IN JUNE 2020 AND ZYNGA ITSELF SOLD 18 MONTHS LATER FOR 52% BELOW ITS PANDEMIC PEAK, WHICH TELLS YOU EVERYTHING ABOUT WHO WON THAT TRANSACTION