Facebook Acquires PlayGiga to Boost Its Cloud Gaming Services Platform

Facebook announced this morning that it acquired PlayGiga, a popular cloud gaming startup. The news confirmed by TechCrunch today, days after Cinco Das reported the tech giant was in advance talks to buy the popular gaming startup, at a valuation of around $78 million. The terms of the deals are not yet disclosed.

PlayGiga was founded in 2013 and received a round of funding from Adara Ventures. Early this year, PlayGiga CEO Javier Polo announced that they are working with telcos to develop streaming game tech for 5G, to help tech companies reach more mobile gamers. The startup has also created a gaming-as-a-service platform, to enable telcos and communication service providers to offer streaming games services.

Facebook announced last month that it will acquire Beat Games, developer of popular VR title Beat Saber, following which the news of buying PlayGiga begins to heat up.

The move could be to help Facebook’s gaming business. Facebook is developing its own gaming business, which now has over 700 million monthly users. The company aims to expand its revenue sources beyond online advertising.

Starting this year, Facebook also added it gaming hub to its main social navigation menu after originally launching the official standalone app. The hub also includes live streaming service it launched last year to compete with Instant Games and Twitch.