GameDuell is one of Berlin’s lesser-spotted startup success stories, but it is starting to make more noise – the company has revealed plans to take on an extra 120 staff in 2013 as it looks to expand into the casual and social gaming spaces.
Founded in 2003, GameDuell prospered during the post-bubble years in the middle of the last decade, and now boasts more than 80 million users in across its 70 games. The recruitment drive will see the number of employees increase by more than 50 percent. The need for a higher profile has also seemingly become apparent, with the experienced Axel Schmidt – formerly of Frogster and its parent company Gameforge – taking over as head of PR.
While gaming as a whole is hot – as always – no sub-market is more active right now than casual gaming, as seen by the impressive success recorded by fellow Berlin startup Wooga. To keep up, GameDuell is therefore looking for experts in technology, development, product management and graphics across a wide range of languages and platforms.
The company’s CEO Kai Bolik said: “We plan to expand our activities and offers in the area of mobile and social games significantly this year. We will accompany this expansion by building out our public relations efforts targeted at professionals who really want to make a difference in the world of games. We are delighted that Axel Schmidt, as an experienced industry expert, has joined us in this endeavor.”
Founded in Berlin in December 2003 by Kai, Michael Kalkowski and Boris Wasmuth, GameDuell has grown to become one of the largest cross-platform games communities in the world with 500 million page impressions per month and more than 1,000 partner portals and site. Its titles include Fluffy, Maya Pyramid and Jungle Jewels.