How it started
History
Glu Mobile was founded as Sorrent in 2001. In December 2004, Sorrent acquired the London-based Macrospace. In June 2005 the merged company created a new corporate name: Glu Mobile. That same year, Greg Ballard replaced Sorrent founder Scott Orr as CEO. In 2006, Glu Mobile acquired iFone, a mobile video game developer based in the United Kingdom. In 2007, it acquired Chinese mobile game producer Beijing Zhangzhong MIG Information Technology Co. Ltd. ("MIG"). In September 2007, Glu announced the launch of Asteroids for mobile phones. In March 2008, Glu acquired San Clemente-based mobile developer Superscape.
In January 2010, Niccolo de Masi joined Glu Mobile as the president and CEO. De Masi was previously CEO at Hands-On Mobile. Since his arrival, Glu has transitioned to a freemium business model focused around Glu's original IP.
On August 2, 2011, Glu acquired Griptonite Games and Blammo Games. Its staff of 200 "approximately double[d]" Glu's internal development capacity.
In April 2012, Glu acquired the entire Deer Hunter franchise.
Glu Mobile bought Gamespy Technologies (the entity responsible for GameSpy multiplayer services) from IGN Entertainment in August 2012, and proceeded in December to raise integration costs and shut down servers for many older games, including the Star Wars: Battlefront series, Sniper Elite, Microsoft Flight Simulator X and Neverwinter Nights, with no warning to developers or consumers. GameSpy Technologies remained operational and did not make any announcements of an impending shutdown; the two GameSpy companies were separate entities and only related by name. In April 2014, Glu announced that they would shut down all remaining Gamespy multiplayer services on May 31, 2014, which affected many older games, also the online multiplayer services on the game consoles Nintendo DS and Wii (via Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection).
From Wikipedia’s article on Glu Mobile, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3