Sega could be acquiring Angry Birds developer Rovio for $1 billion

Sega might be acquiring Angry Birds developer Rovio for a surprisingly large sum of $1 billion, closing the deal as early as next week.

This comes from a report from The Wall Street Journal, who has spoken to people familiar with the situation. The deal is apparently expected to wrap up sometime next week, assuming discussions don't fall through or anything else gets in the way. An official comment on the potential deal hasn't been provided by Sega or Rovio. Earlier this year Israeli digital entertainment company Playtika was gearing up to acquire Rovio for a smaller sum of almost $800 million, but talks ended in March.

Rovio is obviously best known for the Angry Bird series, the first game of which was released in 2009. It was incredibly successful right from the get go, spawning numerous sequels, spinoffs, merchandise, and a couple of movie adaptations. But the series' popularity has waned over the years, particularly with the change in mobile gaming habits moving from casual experiences to more in depth, fleshed out ones like with titles like Genshin Impact. All of which makes it a bit odd that Sega is potentially acquiring the developer, especially for such a large amount of money (although I guess for companies that big, only numbers like Microsoft's $70 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard count as a lot of money).

Bafflingly, earlier this year Rovio made the decision to remove the original Angry Birds game (which had been retitled to Rovio Classics: Angry Birds) from the Google Play Store, for reasons that just seemed to be it didn't like that people only had to spend 79p on it. It also renamed the game on iOS to Red's First Flight, though the game is again available on the Google Play Store under this name now. Maybe Sega didn't like that choice and spent a bit more than 79p to ensure it could still play the original Angry Birds.