Lego Digital Play acquires ForthStar, adds around 30 people

ForthStar launched in 2023 and went public in January 2024 with 14 former Golf Clash team members and $10 million in backing from Griffin Gaming Partners. Gouge and Rigby previously co-founded Playdemic, which Warner Bros bought in 2017 and which EA acquired — including Golf Clash — for $1.4 billion in 2021. Lego Digital Play itself was established at the start of 2025 as a separate company from the Lego Group and currently employs just over 100 people, primarily in London and Denmark.

Lego Digital Play’s president Aaron Loeb framed mobile as the place to reach “kids of all ages in every country on the globe,” and Gouge called the acquisition a chance “to really bring Lego to the prominence that it truly deserves on mobile.” Loeb, who previously led FoxNext Games, pushed back on the idea that mobile is declining, saying “the rumours of mobile’s death have been greatly exaggerated,” and noting the studio is taking “a different approach and a different way of thinking” than past projects like Golf Clash or Marvel Strike Force. This is Lego Digital Play’s second studio buy in just over two months — it recently acquired Offroad Games, maker of Chrome Valley Customs — and the company has also bought Light Brick Studio from Kirkbi.