LONDON (ShareCast) - (ShareCast News) - Keywords Studios, a technical services provider to the global video games industry, announced on Friday it has acquired four of the company's leading competitors in France.
Around the World, Arsec, Dune Sound and La Marque, which are all based in Paris, specialise in French audio recording and localisation, a service which is primarily focused on translating video games into local languages, as well as accounting for cultural difference across markets.

Keywords said it would spend €1m upgrading its existing studio space in Paris to integrate the newly acquired businesses.

Coming at a total cost of €6.6m, with a further payment of €1m dependent on performance, the companies have combined annual revenues of €9m and annual profits of €900,000.

Fulvio Sioli, Keywords' European managing director, said: "These acquisitions are an important milestone in the development of our Localisation and Audio Services business lines in Europe."

According to the report, Michael Golgevit, founder of Dune Sound, will become the chief executive of the assembled companies.

"While the trend for game developers and publishers to increasingly source all languages from a single provider is clear, some clients continue to want to transact separately for individual languages," said Sioli.

"This is still most prevalent for those regarded as pillar languages of which French is probably still the most important."

As of 1110 BST, shares had remained relatively stable, down just 0.30% to 1,168p.

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