For the past year or so people have occasionally asked what ever happened to Prettygreat. The Australian studio founded by former members of Halfbrick seemed to just disappear off the face of the Earth. I’m not quite sure when it happened, but all of their games have disappeared from the App Store, including our 2015 Game of the Year Land Sliders, the cute milkshake-sliding game Slide the Shakes, and the seemingly very popular MMO driving game Crash Club. Prettygreat hasn’t Tweeted in well over a year, their Facebook page is gone, and their YouTube channel has removed all of its content. So what the hell happened? Well, according to some filings with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, it looks like Snapchat creator Snap has quietly invested in and seemingly bought out Prettygreat. So quietly in fact that this news actually broke on CNET two weeks ago and we’re just now finding out about it.
According to the filings, the three founders of Prettygreat, Phil Larsen, Hugh Walters, and Fruit Ninja creator Luke Muscat, have all sold their shares in the company and the general manager of Snapchat, Inc. Australia, Kathryn Carter, has been listed as the new director of the company. This would line up with rumors from last year that hinted at Snap wanting to get more involved in gaming and possibly even create its own gaming platform amid the slowdown of Snapchat’s once explosive growth. We’ve worked with the three founders of Prettygreat going back to the Halfbrick days, and I’m curious to know if they’ll continue to be involved in the company or if perhaps they’re cashing out in hopes of starting up another new venture. I would imagine that until whatever deals are solidified or Snap decides to start talking about any of this that we won’t be hearing anything further, but once details do start to emerge I’ll be VERY interested to see what the future plans are for Prettygreat. For now though, let’s just pour one out for the Prettygreat as we knew it.
