Founded in 1999, Alawar Entertainment has over ten years of experience in the development, publication and distribution of casual games. The company's catalog currently includes around 250 globally popular casual games, making Alawar one of the top casual game publishers worldwide and the largest provider of casual games in Eastern Europe. Many of Alawar's releases, including Magic Ball 2, Stand o' Food, The Treasures of Montezuma, Fashion Craze, the Farm Frenzy series, The Treasures Of Mystery Island, Natalie Brooks: The Secret of Treasure House and more are among the most popular offerings online. Today, Alawar works with more than 30 developers, providing a full range of services that includes production, distribution and marketing for their titles. The company also develops it own games through five internal studios: Alawar DreamDale, Alawar Five-BN, Alawar Friday’s Games, Alawar Melesta and Alawar Stargaze.
Alawar distributes its offerings via its exclusive network of Web sites (www.alawar.com, www.alawar.ru and www.gamextazy.com) and an end-user application that provides free downloads and automatic product updates (Alawar Game Box). The company's releases can also be found on the Web sites of numerous online portals, including RealNetworks, Oberon Media, Big Fish, Yahoo! Games, AOL, Reflexive, iWIN, Boonty, PlayFirst, Shockwave and others. Today, Alawar cooperates with more than 60 online distributors to reach the massive number of casual gamers worldwide.
In addition to distributing games online, Alawar works with more than 30 publishers in 25 countries to distribute about a half-million CDs containing the company's games each year.
In 2004, Alawar entered the Eastern European market and became the first company to sell casual games to Russian-language consumers. Today, Alawar has a dominant presence in Eastern Europe, reaching 85 percent of the market for casual games in that region due to the popularity of www.alawar.ru and the release of a white label solution that enables the owners of Web sites to launch their own casual games section. Today, casual games from the company's portfolio are offered through more than 200 leading Russian resources, including Rambler-Games, Games@Mail.ru and the Web sites of the RBC company.
In August 2007, Finam Investment Holding, one of the largest investment firms in the Russian Federation, acquired a minority stake in Alawar. The proceeds of the investment will be used to acquire core assets (including outside development studios), create high-quality casual games, improve casual content distribution technologies and implement in-game advertisements into Alawar's titles.
In October 2007, Alawar and New Edge, a renowned developer and publisher of Java games, announced the creation of Alawar NewEdge Mobile, a company that will specialize in the publication and distribution of games for mobile phones. The company launched with a catalog of more than 100 games, including Magic Ball 2 Mobile Edition, the mobile port of one of the most famous Breakout games for the PC; the mobile version of The Treasures of Montezuma; Sky Bubble Deluxe, the Snowy the Bear series; and more. Alawar NewEdge Mobile plans to release more new casual games for mobile phones and to launch a massive distribution campaign in the Western and Eastern European markets. In addition to the publication of casual games, Alawar NewEdge Mobile will publish games of other genres, including titles based on movies.
Alawar's titles are also enjoyed by users of interactive television. Today, many of the company's offerings have made their way onto cable set-top boxes. Never content to stand still, Alawar's current initiatives include the production of arcade machines offering casual content (Casual Kiosk) and the company's first foray into the console market.
