Facebook has acquired PlayGiga, a Madrid-based cloud gaming startup. The company confirmed the deal to CNBC today, the week after Cinco Dias reported it was in talks to buy PlayGiga for about 70 million euros ($78 million).
PlayGiga was founded in 2013 and received Series A funding from Adara Ventures, according to Crunchbase. In May, CEO Javier Polo wrote on MCV Develop that the startup has been working with telcos to create streaming game technology for 5G, which will help tech companies to reach more mobile gamers. It also developed a gaming-as-a-service platform, using Intel’s Visual Cloud platform, that will enable telcos and communication service providers to offer streaming games to their customers.
The acquisition of PlayGiga follows Facebook’s announcement last month that it has agreed to buy Beat Games, developer of popular virtual reality title Beat Saber.
Facebook is building out its gaming business, which it claims now has more than 700 million monthly users, as it diversifies its revenue sources beyond online advertising. Earlier this year, the company added its Gaming hub to Facebook’s main navigation menu after originally launching it as a standalone app. The hub includes the livestreaming service it launched last year to compete with Twitch, Instant Games and posts from gaming-related pages.
The company also began selling Oculus Quest and Rift headsets earlier this year, after acquiring Oculus for $2 billion in 2014, and recently launched Facebook Horizon, a VR universe.
