Angry Birds developer Rovio buys smaller development firm

The company behind the wildly successful mobile and casual game Angry Birds has just scooped up a fellow mobile game developer.

Rovio has announced that it will purchase the company Futuremark for an undisclosed sum of money. Futuremark is a startup company that has become best known for its first-person shooter game Shattered Horizon.

It also has an industry-leading benchmark called 3DMark, which “will allow unified gaming performance comparison across operating systems and form factors for the first time,” according to Futuremark CEO Jukka Makinen.

“I am proud to see the potential of our talented games team recognised by Rovio,” Makinen said in a statement. The company said that under the new ownership, its focus will be on supporting the 3DMark platform.

For most startups, the ultimate goal is being acqquired by some large corporation at a large premium that leaves the company owners wealthy and set for life.

It’s a much more significantly rare situation when the startup ends up being the one doing the acquiring. But that is the case with Rovio, a small development studio that just a couple years ago no one had ever heard of.

Now, though, it’s becoming a household name. The company recently launched its latest entry in the hit franchise, Angry Birds Space.

In just a matter of days, the new version of the bird-flinging sensation has been downloaded more than 10 million times. Rovio may be a typical story of being at the right place at the right time, but it also has shown that it knows how to market itself in a wildly successful way.