Lego Digital Play acquires ForthStar studio from Golf Clash founders
Key takeaways
- Acquisition adds about 30 employees to Lego Digital Play
- Lego Digital Play split from the Lego Group in early 2025
- Golf Clash (Playdemic) has generated over $1bn in revenue
Lego Digital Play has acquired Manchester-based ForthStar, the mobile studio founded by Golf Clash creators Paul Gouge and Alex Rigby, in a deal that adds roughly 30 people to Lego Digital Play’s team. Paul Gouge will become head of games across Lego Digital Play, while Alex Rigby will stay on to lead ForthStar as a flagship studio; financial terms were not disclosed and the Manchester team will remain in place.
Before the acquisition Lego Digital Play operated as a separate company from the Lego Group from early 2025 and had around 100 employees, mainly in London and Denmark. The ForthStar addition pushes the group’s headcount toward the low 130s and brings a new UK base under the company umbrella. Lego Digital Play’s leadership says it is recruiting teams with creative cultures and shared values, and the studio’s existing staff will continue working from Manchester.
Gouge and Rigby are the founders behind Playdemic, the studio that made Golf Clash; GamesBeat reports Golf Clash has generated more than $1 billion in revenue and is approaching $2 billion, with hundreds of millions of downloads. Playdemic was acquired by Warner Bros. in 2017 and sold to Electronic Arts in 2021 for $1.4 billion. The pair left Playdemic and launched ForthStar in 2023 to focus on building and operating live-service mobile games at scale.
Why it matters
Aaron Loeb, president of Lego Digital Play, says the company wants to bring the Lego building system into digital games and that mobile is the best starting point to reach children worldwide — the acquisition adds experienced mobile operators and a Manchester studio to support that push.
Original source
PocketGamer.biz
