Disney acquires social game dev Playdom for $563.2m

Disney Interactive today announced its acquisition of social game developer Playdom. Rumor of the deal surfaced late last week, when it was suggested that Disney was ready to pay in excess of $600 million for the company. The final handshake was over a much more reasonable sum of $563.2 million (plus a "performance-linked earn-out of up to $200 million"). And now, our expert analysis of the transaction: "Sweet baby Jesus, that's so much money."

Playdom, which has only been in operation for two-and-a-half-years, has created a number of successful social gaming properties that you've ... probably never heard of, including Social City, Sorority Life and Market Street. It's properties have about 42 million active players every month, which gives some indication as to why Disney was so eager to bring Playdom into its magic kingdom. Then again, maybe Ole D didn't want to be the only publisher that missed out on the recent craze over social game developers. Haven't you heard? They're all the rage.