Ludigames S.A.

Ludigames S.A. was a French game development and publishing studio founded on 1st February 2000 by Michel Guillemot as Ludiwap S.A. Set up by Ubi Soft (game development and publishing) and Guillemot Corporation (multimedia products), it was aimed at the mobile market.

Initially the company focused on WAP and SMS games, but as the technology progressed the focus was broadened to PDA and Java games. Since the original name no longer reflected the new business, it was changed on 8th February 2001 to the more general Ludigames. Ludiwap was kept as a brand for the WAP/SMS business and Ludipocket was introduced as a brand for entertainment products for electronic organizers.

On 1st October 2001 the whole of Ludigames merged with Gameloft S.A. (another company set up by the Guillemot family) and was absorbed into that company. At that time Ludigames employed 69 people in offices in ten countries:* Ludigames France S.A. (France) * Ludigames GmbH (Germany) * Ludigames Inc (USA) * Ludigames Inc (Canada) * Ludigames KK (Japan) * Ludigames Ltd (United Kingdom) * Ludigames Ltd (China) * Ludigames S.A. (Spain) * Ludigames Srl (Italy) * Ludigames Srl (Romania)

Michel Guillemot took over the managing roles of the new fused company from his brother Gérard Guillemot. The merger was needed because Gameloft could not created the needed profit based on web activities (66,600,000 € net loss in the fiscal year 2001) and Ludigames, despite the larger scope with PDA and SMS), was not profitable either. After the merger Gameloft gave web products as the sole focus a lower priority and quickly went on to define its core business as JAVA and BREW game titles.