Outfit7 Limited is a Slovenian video game developer, best known as the creator of the Talking Tom and Friends app and media franchise. The company was founded by Samo and Iza Login. The company operates in 7 studios worldwide and almost exclusively focuses on mobile games related to the Talking Tom and Friends franchise. In January 2017, the company was acquired by United Luck Consortium and then sold to Zhejiang Jinke for over USD 1 billion.
History
Founding and early years
Outfit7 was founded by Samo and Iza Login, who had studied computer science in college and wanted to get into the mobile app business following the debut of the Apple App Store. In 2009, they invested $250,000 with six friends and set up on office in Ljubljana, Slovenia, where they developed some apps. Their first few attempts — a soccer app, a travel guide to Iceland and a "wealth affirmation app" were unsuccessful. After six months of attempts, they developed a children's app called Talking Tom Cat, in which an animated cat named Tom would repeat in a "high-pitched helium squeak whatever is spoken into an iPhone's microphone" along with other reactions to feeding and petting.
Talking Tom and Friends
The Talking Tom and Friends franchise was created with the launch of the Talking Tom Cat app. It focused on anthropomorphic cats and dogs repeating things said to it by the user, before shifting focus to other apps such as endless-runner games, virtual pet games and the like. The franchise reached 300 million downloads 19 months after its launch. The app franchise then went on to hit one billion downloads in June 2013. Talking Tom and Friends apps have been downloaded over 12 billion times as of April 2020.
In 2016, Samo and Iza Login hired Goldman Sachs to arrange for a deal to sell their company. On 20 January 2017 it was announced in a press release that Outfit7 was sold to United Luck Holdings Consortium, a China-based group for US$1 billion. However, four days later, another press release indicated that United Luck would sell Outfit7 to a Chinese chemical company, Zhejiang Jinke Peroxide Company, which was renamed to Zhejiang Jinke Entertainment Culture Co. Ltd after it had purchased a Chinese game developer. There was some confusion over who owned Outfit7 given that Jinke had disclosed plans to buy a 10% stake of United Luck. In March 2017, the agreement to sell Outfit7 to Jinke was signed. Samo Login remained on board as company director, and Iza Login remained as an advisor. In July 2018, Xinyu Qian became the CEO, while Prek took up the post of advisor.
