Yahoo has acquired a California-based virtual world gaming service "Cloud Party" and plans to shut down its services February 21, when the start-up's team will join the Yahoo workforce.
After acquiring "Sparq" and announcing the end of the Seattle-based tech startup, Yahoo is moving on to its next target. The web giant has acquired a browser-based virtual world gaming startup "Cloud Party" and will shut down all its related services next month. The news was confirmed by Cloud Party's CEO and founder, Sam Thompson, in a blog post, Friday, but he did not reveal the finances of the deal.
Cloud Party is a gaming service that offers a virtual 3D experience directly from users' browsers without the need for any downloads or plug-ins to create customized avatars. The browser-based gaming startup was the brainchild of a team of founders and gaming console veterans including CEO Thompson, CTO and co-founder Conor Dickson, and engineers Jimb Esser and Jered Windsheimer.
"We're excited to announce that the time has come for the Cloud Party team to start our next adventure. We are joining Yahoo!" announced Thompson on the company's website. "The last two years have been an incredible experience for everyone here. We've been continually amazed by your creativity and the worlds you've built and shared with us."
Though it is unclear what Yahoo intends to do with its latest acquisition, but as Thompson pointed out in his note, his team was excited to join a company as passionate about games as them. This clears at least one thing that Yahoo is focusing on a gaming platform and it is likely to put into use expertise of its last year's PlayerScale acquisition, TechCrunch reports.
