Advising Lessmore on its sale to Miniclip

We have advised Lessmore, an independent mobile game studio based in Germany, on its sale to Miniclip, a leading video games and entertainment company. 

Founded in 2021, Lessmore is the developer of hit mobile games Eatventure, We are Warriors! and Pocket Chess, together amassing over 100 million downloads. Lessmore is led by the three-founder team of Joshua Hemmerich, Jeremy Ries and Samer Al Dafai, and supported by Head of Operations Sophie Baker. This transaction follows a series of recent high-profile acquisitions by Miniclip, including Easybrain and Futurlab. 

Commenting on the transaction, Richard Faichney, Senior Counsel said: "We're so delighted to support Josh, Jerry and Sam on this amazing next step in the Lessmore journey. They've built an amazing business in a short space of time and we're excited to see what the future holds. This is another successful deal for the video games team at Taylor Wessing, following a number of significant transactions in recent years for clients like SEGA Europe, BITKFRAFT Ventures, and Behaviour Interactive, calling upon our market-leading industry knowledge and global reach."

Lessmore co-founder, Jeremy Ries comments: "This marks an important new chapter in our journey which will allow us to leverage Miniclip’s extensive expertise and reach to continue to scale our games and provide ever more engaging and fun experiences to our players. Richard and the wider Taylor Wessing team have been exceptional throughout the process and brought their deep industry knowledge to this deal. They provided tremendous value to us with their experience and technical, commercial advice."

The cross-border deal was led by Richard Faichney (Corporate, Senior Counsel) and Robert Fenner (Corporate, Partner).

The team also included Jack Turner (Corporate, Associate), Graham Samuel-Gibbon (Tax, Partner), Bridget Winters (Tax, Senior Counsel), Sian Skelton (Commercial/IP, Partner), and Helen Farr (Employment, Partner) in the UK, and Niclas von Woedtke (Corporate, Partner), Jens Wolf (Corporate, Partner), Philipp Weiten (Tax, Partner) and Stefan Horn (Competition, Partner) in Germany.

We worked closely with Aream & Co, the leading independent investment bank within interactive entertainment, on this acquisition.