Big Fish touts 2 billion game downloads, reports $220 million in bookings last year

Paul Thelen

Big Fish currently sits atop the GeekWire 200 list, our ranking of the top privately-held companies in the region. And here’s a good reason why. The Seattle game maker, founded by former RealNetworks employee Paul Thelen in 2002, announced today that it has distributed more than two billion casual games to PCs and mobile devices… Read More…

Big Fish CEO Paul Thelen: ‘I’m an idea guy and that can be dangerous as a CEO’

Big Fish Games CEO Paul Thelen at Casual Connect

Big Fish founder Paul Thelen didn’t think he’d become a technology CEO. But after an illness brought his life into sharp focus, Thelen decided to quit his job at RealNetworks and start Big Fish. The 11-year-old company now employs 700, and is making a big push into mobile and cloud-based gaming. In 2011, it posted… Read More…

Big Fish unveils $7.99 per month cloud gaming service, streaming titles across tablets, PCs and smartphones

Big Fish Games CEO Paul Thelen at Casual Connect

Seattle’s Big Fish Games today unveiled a new cloud-based gaming service called Big Fish Unlimited that allows game players to participate in games across tablets, PCs, TVs and smartphones, saving the games as participants play. The new $7.99 per month service, launched today in a live demo at the Casual Connect conference in Seattle, includes… Read More…

Big Fish adds Silicon Valley investor Bill Lee to board

Big-Fish-Games

Silicon Valley investor Bill Lee, a backer of companies such as Tesla, SpaceX, Hootsuite and Zaarly, has joined the board of Seattle casual game developer Big Fish Games. The appointment comes a few weeks after Jeremy Lewis stepped down as CEO of the company, handing the reins back to founder Paul Thelen. Lee previously served… Read More…

Here are 5 tech companies from Seattle that could take the IPO plunge in 2012

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The world may be waiting on a Facebook IPO. And while there’s some chatter about whether the $5 billion public offering from the social networking giant will open the floodgates for tech offerings, The Wall Street Journal today notes that it might be a new breed that actually woos Wall Street: enterprise IT companies. That’s… Read More…

Big Fish hooks an Angry Bird: Wibe Wagemans to head game company’s mobile unit

Wibe Wagemans

Wibe Wagemans — who flew the coop at Angry Birds maker Rovio three months ago —  just landed at Big Fish Games. The Seattle game maker is announcing today that Wagemans will oversee the company’s mobile business. Mobile is a growing part of Big Fish’s business, with the company saying that it has helped launch 237… Read More…

Apple pulls subscription service from Big Fish Games, removes Play Instantly from the app store

bigfish-app

Earlier this week, Big Fish Games announced a new subscription gaming app that allowed iPhone users to pay a monthly fee in order to play dozens of different games. It was a novel idea, in part because Big Fish said it marked the first time that a subscription-based gaming service had come to the iPad…. Read More…

Big Fish pioneers new subscription game service for the iPad

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For years, here’s how things worked in Apple’s app store. You discovered a mobile app you liked, and then you either downloaded it for free or paid a small one-time fee to purchase it. But a new subscription service launched today for the iPad by Seattle’s Big Fish Games could turn that model on its… Read More…