Toronto startup TriplePlay (formerly Lobby) has been acquired by international gaming giant Roblox for an undisclosed amount.
TriplePlay co-founders Mark Hlady (CEO) and Yuri Takhteyev (CTO) announced the acquisition on Friday, after two years of building the startup’s platform.
Founded in 2020, TriplePlay develops virtual gamified social events for companies that want to boost event attendance and employee engagement in remote and hybrid work environments. Its platform has built-in games, chat rooms, trivia, and the option for live entertainment. The startup has worked with clients like Deloitte, KPMG, Telus, Certn, and HiMama.
TriplePlay previously raised around $1 million in seed funding from Goodwater Capital, N49P, Box One and angel investor Charlie Songhurst, former head of strategy at Microsoft, in December for initial operations and salaries.
By September 20, TriplePlay will be shutting off user access to its platform and said all user data connected with TriplePlay accounts will be deleted.
In his statement on LinkedIn, Hlady said that TriplePlay was created for people to foster deeper connections at a time when “work was remote and tech platforms moved from connecting to entertaining.”
“At Roblox, our team will continue to work to deliver an incredible immersive experience to Roblox’s 58 million daily active users on an expanding variety of platforms and operating systems,” he added.
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Roblox, a virtual games marketplace and game creation platform, reported a revenue of $591.2 million in its second quarter earnings report this year, up 30 percent year-over-year. The New York Stock Exchange-listed company also said it has 52.2 million average daily active users, an increase of 21 percent YoY.
Last year, Roblox acquired Guilded, a platform to connect gaming communities with tools such as tiered voice chat, video chat, integrated calendars, scheduling tools, and more.
Before he started working on TriplePlay, Hlady was the head of product at ResQ. He was also a product strategy lead at Facebook, as well as an engagement manager and product manager at McKinsey & Company.
As a repeat founder, Hlady also created Finance for Good in 2012. Finance for Good was later acquired by Purposed Capital in 2016. Hlady wrote on LinkedIn that he is starting a new venture, outside of Roblox, and will be focusing on angel investing.
Takhteyev was the vice president of engineering at Wealthsimple, leaving the role in 2020 to build TriplePlay. Prior to that, he was the CTO at engineering consultancy Rangle.io for six years.
Featured image from Roblox’s website.