Game Hosting Specialist OGSi Acquired

Online game hosting specialist Online Game Services Inc. (OGSI) has been acquired by long-term Global Netopotex Inc. (GNi) in a deal valued at more than $3 million, positioning GNi to provide “pay-as-you-grow” game hosting solutions to the fast-growing industry for massively multiplayer games. While OGSi specializes in MMO games, it also offers clan servers for games including Counter Strike, Doom3, Half Life 2 and Battlefield 1942.

“Acquiring OGSi is a natural progression,” said Derek Wise, GNi’s president and CEO. “By combining their expertise in the games space with ours in managed services, we achieve increased economies of scale and efficiency to better serve our customers.”

“Combining our two companies clearly strengthens our ability to serve the game industry with innovative hosting solutions,” said James Hursthouse, CEO of OGSi. “We’ll also be taking our ‘pay-as-you-grow’ model into new areas such as interactive TV, video and music services, and social community websites.”

OGSi currently has more than 1,000 blade servers packed into 12 cabinets in 365 Main’s San Francisco data center. OGSi has been developing its game service provider business model since 2004, hosting sites for Ping0 LLC and GoPets Ltd. with the new Hellgate London online game. With its acquisition by GNi, OGSi expects to have over 4,000 additional servers operational for games clients in 10 datacenters worldwide by the end of 2007.

“We’ll be building out these gaming dedicated hosting infrastructure in other data centers operated by 365 Main,” said Hursthouse. “Our goal is to provide the industry with every excuse not to build data center infrastructure in-house. It’s a drastic reduction in risk and cost.”