Zynga, Playtika, Tencent, Stillfront, Embracer, and many more are achieving fantastic growth through M&A. In many ways, acquiring gaming studios has become the norm for growth for successful gaming companies.

Yet we tend to forget how volatile M&A tends to be. According to research and a recent Harvard Business Review report, the failure rate for mergers and acquisitions (M&A) sits between 70 percent and 90 percent when looking at all industries combined.

In this episode, I'm joined by Lou Fasulo, former CEO of Z2, which was acquired by King in 2015 and shut down in 2019. In many ways, the acquisition of Z2 represents the more common way acquisitions tend to play out. After a bloomy dating period comes the honeymoon, which is followed by the challenges of functioning effectively as a part of a larger corp. As the challenges mount, the result is often the dismantling of the acquired entity.

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