Studio · United States · since 1997

MumboJumbo

The company was founded in January 2001 by Mark Dochtermann and Ron Dimant after leaving Ritual Entertainment. In 2003 it became one of the first independent developers to popularize casual games by partnering with portal sites to make games available for download directly to Windows and Mac computers. MumboJumbo was previously a United Developers Company that acquired other development companies including Zono, Ritual Entertainment, and Hot Lava Studios. On January 24, 2007, MumboJumbo announced their acquisition of Ritual Entertainment, a popular developer of first person shooter titles such as SiN and Star Trek: Elite Force II. Upon acquisition Ritual was made to assist with work on casual game titles, causing many prominent employees to leave the company and many analysts to speculate why the acquisition had been made in the first place. Some analysts have since criticized the move as both foolish and a massive waste of money. It is still unclear as to the purpose of MumboJumbo's decision, as MumboJumbo had not released an official statement regarding their intentions to acquire a game developer known for creating mature titles in order to re-purpose them for casual game development. On January 25, 2010, a jury in the 193rd Civil District Court in Dallas County, Texas awarded MumboJumbo $4,600,000 in damages resulting from a breach of contract on the part of their former business partner PopCap Games. MumboJumbo had previously held a North American retail distribution agreement with the casual games developer. According to MumboJumbo, the relationship was violated when PopCap Games began to develop its own strategies for selling at retail. During the 12-day trial, MumboJumbo's law firm Rose-Walker showed that PopCap's actions "severely damaged" their business relationship with Walmart. As of late 2017, operations seem to have ceased, their website only leads to a logo without any of the content they used to host.