Dublin based Quality Assurance and localization studio Keywords increased its group revenues by 74 per cent year-on-year to €23.9 million for the first half of 2015 from €13.7 million last year.
Keywords noted that it was now working towards becoming a less seasonally dependent business. Company’s growth has been particularly from the area’s like art services, where it is working at capacity despite hiring 100 more staff to fill these roles. The firm also reported a return by studios to more normal production patterns following a period of some uncertainty following the launch of the PS4 and Xbox One.
“The rhythm of game production and release schedules has returned to a more normal pattern following the disruption caused by the release of new games consoles in November 2013. As such, we are seeing a return to more traditional trading patterns in our audio, testing and localisation businesses. This, combined with the benefits of our recent acquisitions, organic investment and client wins leaves us well placed for the second half, with the out turn for the full year anticipated to be in-line with the board’s expectations,” said Keywords CEO Andrew Day.
The company has been more open to investments and acquisitions and this has clearly been seen in this quarter with the acquisition of customer care company Alchemic Dream, localisation provider Reverb Localizaçăo, audio recording and localisation outfit Kite Team, Indian art production company Lakshya Digital and art outsourcing studio Liquid Development.
“The acquisition of Liquid Development in August this year has both provided additional in-house capacity and has also brought much greater flexibility in resourcing which will allow us to flex up and down with the demands of individual projects in much the same way that we do in our other service lines,” added Day.
The company has recently worked on games like Skylanders Supercharger, Batman: Arkham Knight, Mortal Combat X, Project Cars and Mad Max. New clients too have helped the company achieve the results this quarter with the newer client list including Oculus, Amazon and Gearbox.