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GameDuell

Delivered January 8, 2020. Contributor: Michelle A.

Goals

To obtain any publicly available information on Berlin-based GameDuell, including financial, employees, shareholders, and public metrics, in order to evaluate the company as a potential M&A target.

Early Findings

  • GameDuell is a Berlin-based gaming company that was founded in 2003 and, according to a video on the website, has about 180 employees (Team video at 4:29). Crunchbase estimates the number of employees at 210.
  • The privately held company also has a location in San Francisco, California.
  • The founders of the company are Boris Wasmuth, Kai Bolik, and Michael Kalkowski. According to Crunchbase, it appears they are all still actively involved with the company, although Kalkowski's LinkedIn profile shows that his time as managing and creative director at the company ended in June 2016.
  • From 2008 to 2014, GameDuell had revenue that varied from just below one million euros to almost six million euros. However, the company posted losses in 2015 and 2016 before again posting a profit of 1.4 million euros in 2017.
  • The company posted its highest gross profit in 2011, 36.3 million euros, with this decreasing almost every year since. In 2017, the gross profit for the company was 18.7 million euros.
  • In 2016, the company cut about 25% of its staff. No information was found in the initial research on how the staff and company has recovered since then.
  • Bolik has the most active LinkedIn page and indicates that GameDuell has about 150 employees in Berlin and SanFrancisco. This is different from the data reported by Crunchbase and on the undated video on the company website, but is likely the most accurate due to Bolik's position in the company. Bolik also indicates the company is hiring.
  • GameDuell has over 120 million registered users and downloads.
  • The company has about 50 games currently available.

Summary of Findings Relative to Goals

  • There was limited information available on GameDuell, likely because the company is private.
  • Searches were conducted in both English and German.
  • It is expected that further research will not uncover much additional useful information specific to GameDuell.

Proposed next steps:

You need to be the project owner to select a next step.
As the initial research found limited publicly available data on GameDuell, we propose research on the three founders of the company, Wasmuth, Bolik, and Kalkowski. For each person, we propose looking for data on companies founded, current involvement with those companies (to help determine if they are open to selling companies), and any details on deals made for those companies (if any). As this was not covered in the initial research, it is unclear how much data this will uncover.
Additionally, to obtain opinions on the company, we propose researching any available employee reviews on sites such as Glassdoor. The research would summarize employees opinions of the company as well as provide details on the perceived pros and cons of working for the company. As initial research only shows about 20-30 employee reviews, we also propose providing the average star rating for a random sampling of about 10-15 of GameDuell's games on Android and Apple platforms.