Animoca Brands Acquires Grease Monkey Games to Focus on Adding Blockchain Gaming Elements to Upcoming Motorsport Titles

Animoca Brands has garnered hundreds of millions of dollars in fresh funds to fuel its gaming and metaverse strategies this year.

By Shomik Sen Bhattacharjee | Updated: 22 February 2022 17:26 IST

Animoca Brands Acquires Grease Monkey Games to Focus on Adding Blockchain Gaming Elements to Upcoming Motorsport Titles

Photo Credit: Animoca Brands

Grease Monkey Games is the developer of popular mobile titles 'Torque Burnout' and 'Torque Drift'

Highlights

Animoca Brands is a major player in the blockchain gaming space
Grease Monkey Games began operations back in 2013
The studio wields an extensive portfolio of licensed partnerships

In a bid to consolidate its growing presence in the area of blockchain gaming, Web3 investment giant Animoca Brands has now completed the full acquisition of Melbourne-based game developer Grease Monkey Games — a studio that has developed a host of popular motorsport titles such as Torque Burnout and Torque Drift. Established in 2013, Grease Monkey Games' current pipeline of upcoming titles includes a major cross-platform racing game built with Unreal Engine 5 and moving forward, the game studio will be working closely with Animoca Brands to incorporate elements of blockchain tech and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) within its titles.

"The current management of Grease Monkey Games will continue to operate the company after the acquisition, working closely with Animoca Brands to align efforts relating to blockchain integration, fungible tokens, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), play-to-earn capabilities, synergy opportunities, and product launches, particularly in connection to Animoca Brands' REVV Motorsport ecosystem," Animoca said in a publicly available statement.

We are incredibly excited to be joining the Animoca Brands family and its vision for the future of gaming! Combining forces to create truly unique and immersive gaming experiences for Motorsport fans.https://t.co/FMTllWecBf
— Grease Monkey Games (@GMGStudios) February 17, 2022

Currently, Grease Monkey Games wields an extensive portfolio of licenced partnerships with vehicle and aftermarket parts manufacturers such as Honda, Nissan, Toyota, Ford, BMW, and Mishimoto. With almost a decade of motorsport game development now under its belt, the studio's titles have amassed more than 45 million downloads across all platforms.

Yat Siu, co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands, said in a statement, "Animoca Brands is incredibly thrilled to welcome Grease Monkey Games, a team that has experience in developing AAA gaming titles and shares our vision for the open metaverse and, more specifically, for our own REVV Motorsport. Grease Monkey Games not only adds exciting titles to our catalogue, but it also significantly enhances our development capabilities."

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According to Animoca Brands, the rationale behind its most-recent acquisition stems from Grease Monkey's extensive experience in motorsports games development and "established industry partnerships across motorsports and automotive manufacturing".

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The acquisition also means that Animoca Brands will not only appropriate Grease Monkey's entire games catalogue but will also enhance its proprietary development capabilities as the company looks to add content to its growing gaming metaverse including The Sandbox — a blockchain-powered social hub allowing participants to build and trade collections of fantasy and role-playing adventures.

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