Ketchapp
Ketchapp, with its official name Ketchapp SARL, is one of the leading game development companies in the world today. A relatively late entrant into the world of development in comparison to its competitors who have been around for decades on end, Ketchapp was founded only in 2014. The French company, which is based in Paris, has been mostly known for its high-end mobile gaming options. Developed by the Morcos brothers, the company has gained steam and appeal for many reasons. One of the most important of those reasons has to do with its commitment to open-source gaming. The company has a reputation for developing games that include an open source code, something that has helped them align with other tech companies in that space while also contributing to the overall community of gaming just the same. While there are many good games that have been a major part of the company’s success, it is perhaps best known for the popular game 2048. In reality, the company has been less about innovation with new games and more about creating unlicensed versions of existing, popular games. In so doing, the company has drawn the ire of many of its competitors while also becoming a known favorite of the gaming community.
Company History
To understand the company, one must go back to its founding. Antoine and Michel Morcos founded the company in March of 2014 (Luna & Golightly, 2016). They were in Paris at the time and had an idea for a gaming company that could compete with some of the social gaming options on the market. With this in mind, the first thing the company did was take advantage of some of the open source gaming that was already out there (Appel et al., 2017). For instance, the company’s first move was to clone the popular open source puzzle game known as 2048. That game had been developed by Gabriele Cirulli. Ketchapp took this idea and make it into an iOS application. It sought to monetize the game by creating a popular model—one that was free for a while but also included a series of purchases that could be made in the app in order to enhance one’s gameplay. The company had tremendous success right from the jump with this, as 2048 shot right through the roof in terms of iOS downloads.
A New Business Model Emerges: Re-Purposing Existing Games
The company has been accused by some as not being innovative, because after the immense success of 2048, the company decided that its new model should just make use of existing games that are changed and varied slightly. They have taken ideas from very popular applications and turned them into games that people can play. For instance, one of the moves the company did was taking the very popular game from 2013, Flappy Bird, and re-purposing it as one of their own games, Run Bird Run (Panosian, 2017).
From there, the company developed a similar gaming approach, taking the idea of other companies and making them their own, when it developed the popular game ZigZag. In the beginning, people believed that the company had developed a new idea for what would have been the first time. Of course, in April of that year, two months after the game had been released, another development company named Mudloop noted that the game was just another version of their less popular iteration called Zig Zag Boom. They had submitted their game idea to Ketchapp, which had turned it down and then, according to them, turned around and made their own version without giving proper credit. This was a controversial moment for the company not just because of the potential legal scandal, but also because it affirmed the idea that the company did not have many original ideas of its own.
The company has, to this point, released more than 140 games. One of the most popular recent games, developed with a similar model, is Jelly Jump. This was one of the final games developed by the company before it was bought out by Ubisoft. The company bought Ketchapp in September of 2016. Still, the company has maintained its identity. For instance, in early 2017, the company took the very popular idea of the fidget spinner and developed a game off of it. This app did not take a long time to get very popular, receiving more than seven million downloads right away. The company also capitalized on the game in the other direction, then setting up an actual store to sell fidget spinners surrounding its own game.
The Future for Ketchapp
Ketchapp has become one of the most popular developing companies in the world. The company has invested more money in development since it was acquired by Ubisoft, which has allowed the company the opportunity to develop new games (Haenlein, 2017). The company has attempted to do more in regard to the development of its own ideas and new games, allowing it to move into a new area of the gaming world. It is not yet clear what the future holds for Ketchapp, though it does seem to be moving in a direction that will allow it to command more respect among the game development world rather than just being seen as a scavenger of the good ideas of other companies.