Michael Ovitz Puts Money Into GameSpy Industries
Michael Ovitz and Yucaipa's Richard Wolpert have made an equity investment in GameSpy Industries, and Wolpert takes a seat on the company's board.
Hollywood money has found the game internet. Michael Ovitz and Richard Wolpert, who runs Internet and technology ventures as a partner at The Yucaipa Companies, announced Thursday an equity investment in GameSpy Industries. Wolpert also takes a seat on GameSpy’s board.
GameSpy Industries is the outfit behind the GameSpy and MP3Spy software and a network of more than 30 sites, PlanetQuake.com and FilePlanet.com among them. The numbers explain the interest: GameSpy claims an installed base of over 4 million users, and the site network pulls in more than 300,000 unique visitors a day, making its properties some of the fastest growing on the Internet. For Ovitz and Yucaipa the deal follows a run of Internet plays that includes forming CheckOut.com, and the new money goes toward expanding GameSpy’s multiplayer gaming and streaming music services.
When Hollywood’s most famous dealmaker starts cutting checks to the company that runs PlanetQuake, multiplayer gaming has officially graduated from hobby to business.