UNITED STATES SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Washington, D.C. 20549

 

Form 10-K

 

 

Commission file number: 001-33368

 

Glu Mobile Inc.

(Exact name of registrant as specified in its charter)

 

 

(415) 800-6100

 (Registrant’s Telephone Number, Including Area Code)

Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act:

 

 

Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(g) of the Act:

None

(Title of Class)

 

Indicate by check mark if the registrant is a well-known seasoned issuer, as defined in Rule 405 of the Securities Act.  Yes ☐     No ☑

 

Indicate by check mark if the registrant is not required to file reports pursuant to Section 13 or Section 15(d) of the Act.  Yes ☐     No ☑

 

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant (1) has filed all reports required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to file such reports), and (2) has been subject to such filing requirements for the past 90 days.  Yes ☑     No ☐

 

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has submitted electronically and posted on its corporate Web site, if any, every Interactive Data File required to be submitted and posted pursuant to Rule 405 Regulation S-T (§ 232.405 of this chapter during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to submit and post such files).  Yes ☑     No ☐

 

Indicate by check mark if disclosure of delinquent filers pursuant to Item 405 of Regulation S-K (§ 229.405) is not contained herein, and will not be contained, to the best of registrant’s knowledge, in definitive proxy or information statements incorporated by reference in Part III of this Form 10-K or any amendment to this Form 10-K.  ☐

 

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer, or a smaller reporting company. See the definitions of “large accelerated filer,” “accelerated filer” and “smaller reporting company” in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act. (Check one):

 

Large accelerated filer ☐          Accelerated filer ☑           Non-accelerated filer ☐          Smaller reporting company ☐

(Do not check if a smaller reporting company)

 

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a shell company (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act).  Yes ☐     No ☑

 

The aggregate market value of the voting stock held by non-affiliates of the registrant as of June 30, 2015, the last business day of the registrant’s most recently completed second fiscal quarter, based upon the closing price of such stock on such date as reported by The NASDAQ Global Market, was approximately $665,689,774. Shares of common stock held by each executive officer and director of the registrant and by each person who owns 10% or more of the registrant’s outstanding common stock have been excluded in that such persons may be deemed to be affiliates. This determination of affiliate status is not necessarily a conclusive determination for other purposes.

 

The number of outstanding shares of the registrant’s common stock as of February 29, 2016 was 132,202,705. 

 

DOCUMENTS INCORPORATED BY REFERENCE

Portions of the definitive proxy statement for registrant’s 2016 Annual Meeting of Stockholders to be filed pursuant to Regulation 14A within 120 days after registrant’s fiscal year ended December 31, 2015 are incorporated by reference into Part III of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

 

 

Forward-Looking Statements

 

The information in this Annual Report on Form 10-K contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the “Securities Act”), and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the “Exchange Act”).  Such statements are based upon current expectations that involve risks and uncertainties.  Any statements contained herein that are not statements of historical facts may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. For example, words such as “may,” “will,” “should,” “estimates,” “predicts,” “potential,” “continue,” “strategy,” “believes,” “anticipates,” “plans,” “expects,” “intends” and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements.  Our actual results and the timing of certain events may differ significantly from the results discussed in the forward-looking statements.  Factors that might cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to, those discussed elsewhere in this report, particularly in the section titled “Risk Factors,” and the risks discussed in our other Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) filings.  We undertake no obligation to update the forward-looking statements after the date of this report, except as required by law.

 

PART I

 

Item 1.  Business

 

General

 

Glu Mobile develops, publishes and markets a portfolio of games designed to appeal to a broad cross section of the users of smartphones and tablet devices who download and make purchases within our games through direct-to-consumer digital storefronts, such as the Apple App Store, Google Play Store, Amazon Appstore and others.  We occupy leadership positions in four gaming genres: action, celebrity, sports, and simulation.  We create games in these genres based on our own brands, including Contract Killer, Cooking Dash, Deer Hunter, Diner Dash, Eternity Warriors, Frontline Commando, Gun Bros, and Heroes of Destiny.  We also create games based on third-party licensed brands, including Kim Kardashian: Hollywood, Kendall and Kylie, Katy Perry Pop, James Bond: World of Espionage, Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation and Sniper X With Jason Statham, as well as our own branded games that incorporate third-party licensed brands, properties and other content, such as Racing Rivals, Tap Sports Baseball, and Tap Sports Football.  We are headquartered in San Francisco, California, with major U.S. offices outside of Seattle, Washington and in Long Beach, California and international locations in Canada, China, India, Japan, Korea and Russia. 

 

We were incorporated in Nevada in May 2001 as Cyent Studios, Inc. and changed our name to Sorrent, Inc. later that year.  In November 2001, we incorporated a wholly owned subsidiary in California, and, in December 2001, we merged the Nevada corporation into this California subsidiary to form Sorrent, Inc., a California corporation.  In May 2005, we changed our name to Glu Mobile Inc.  In March 2007, we completed our initial public offering and our common stock is traded on the NASDAQ Global Market under the symbol “GLUU.”   Except where the context requires otherwise, in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, references to “Company,” “Glu,” “Glu Mobile,” “we,” “us” and “our” refer to Glu Mobile Inc., and where appropriate, its subsidiaries.

 

Available Information

 

We file annual reports on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, current reports on Form 8-K, proxy statements and other reports, and amendments to these reports, required of public companies with the SEC.  The public can read and copy the materials we file with the SEC at the SEC’s Public Reference Room at 100 F Street, NE, Washington, D.C. 20549 and can obtain information on the operation of the Public Reference Room by calling the SEC at 1-800-SEC-0330.  The SEC also maintains a website at www.sec.gov that contains reports, proxy and information statements, and other information regarding issuers that file electronically with the SEC.  We make available free of charge on the Investor Relations section of our corporate website all of the reports we file with the SEC as soon as reasonably practicable after they are filed.  Our internet website is located at www.glu.com and our Investor Relations website is located at www.glu.com/investors.  The information on our website is not incorporated into this report, unless otherwise expressly stated.  Copies of our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2015 may also be obtained, without charge, by contacting Investor Relations, Glu Mobile Inc., 500 Howard Street, Suite 300,

San Francisco, California 94105 or by emailing IR@glu.com.

 

Business Developments and Strategy

 

Since January 1, 2015, we have taken the following actions to support our business:

 

 

In 2015, we continued to execute on our strategy of becoming the leading developer and publisher of free-to-play games for smartphones and tablets, and we worked to position ourselves to be a leader in developing games for other next-generation platforms, such as smart TVs, wearables, virtual reality and augmented reality devices.  In order for us to achieve these goals, we must develop and publish mobile games that are widely accepted and commercially successful on digital storefronts that distribute games for these devices and platforms.  These include Apple’s App Store and Mac App Store, the Google Play Store, Facebook, and Amazon’s Appstore.   

 

We are dedicated to extending our leadership positions in the action, celebrity, sports and simulation gaming genres.  Our leadership in the action category remains strong with our Deer Hunter and Contract Killer franchises, and we hope to expand that leadership in 2016 with the launch of Frontline Commando Rivals,  which is the title under development through our strategic partnership to bring Tencent’s highly successful shooter in China, WeFire, to North America, Australia, New Zealand, EMEA and South America in 2016.  We established our leadership in the celebrity gaming genre with Kim Kardashian: Hollywood, and we extended that leadership with the launch of our Kendall and Kylie game and with announcements of games to be developed with several additional celebrities, including Taylor Swift.  Our sports label is headlined by our Tap Sports Baseball and Racing Rivals franchises, which we hope to maintain as the

top baseball and racing franchises, respectively, on mobile in 2016.  The simulation category includes our Cooking Dash and Diner Dash franchises, and we look to bolster our position in this category in 2016 through a game featuring Gordon Ramsay and eventually through an invest-express resource management title developed out of our Portland, Oregon studio.

We believe that our games consistently have high production values, are visually appealing and have engaging core gameplay.  These characteristics have typically helped to drive installs and awareness of our games and resulted in highly positive consumer reviews.  We also believe that we have been a consistently good partner of both Apple and Google, which has contributed to the majority of our games being featured on their storefronts when they are commercially released.   

We work closely with our celebrity licensors to engage their social media audiences and build games that will resonate with their unique fan bases.  Our celebrity games utilize transmedia storytelling, leveraging the celebrity’s built-in social media fan base to drive installs and awareness of the game, and then attempting to surprise and delight those fans with real-world events and other game content based on the celebrity’s life.  Our goal is for the game content to become entwined with the celebrity’s persona and social media presence, and to otherwise enhance interaction with the celebrity’s fans.  We also plan to build and nurture social communities in and around the games themselves, creating a new vehicle for strong, personal engagement with the celebrity’s fan base.  In order to capitalize on the impact of our celebrity licensors, we need to differentiate each game we release and space out our launch dates in order to avoid cannibalization of revenue from our existing games and to ensure that each game resonates with our players. 

However, for us to continue driving installs and awareness of our games and to improve monetization and retention of our players, we must first ensure that each game we develop is built with strong core gameplay and a core monetization loop that incentivizes players to make in-app purchases.  In addition, we must regularly update our games with compelling new content, deliver socio-competitive features like tournaments, player-versus-player gameplay and live events and build and nurture social media communities around our franchises both in-game and holistically via community features such as dedicated social channels.  We have also made significant investments in our proprietary analytics and monetization infrastructure.  With our enhanced analytics capabilities, we intend to devote resources towards segmenting and learning more about players of each of our franchises.  We aim to connect our analytics and monetization infrastructure to every element of our business – from marketing to merchandising. 

We also plan to continue monitoring the successful aspects of our games to drive downloads and enhance monetization and retention, whether by optimizing advertising revenue within each title, securing additional compelling licensing arrangements, building enhanced and more complex core gameplay, adding additional social features, tournaments and events or otherwise.  Optimizing advertising revenue within our games requires us to continue taking advantage of positive trends in the mobile advertising space, particularly as brands continue to migrate budgets from web to mobile.  Continuing to drive installs and awareness of our games through licensing efforts requires that we continue to partner with celebrities, social influencers, organizations and brands that resonate with potential players of our games.  Partnering with desirable licensing partners and renewing our existing licenses requires that we continue to develop successful games based on licensed content and are able to compete with other mobile gaming companies on financial and other terms in signing such partners.  We also plan to continue introducing third-party licensed brands, properties and personalities into our games as additional licensed content, for cameo appearances or for limited time events in order to drive awareness and monetization.

Across the globe our industry is evidencing that hit titles generally remain higher in the top grossing charts for longer.  We believe this is due to the continued specialization and investment of teams and companies in their hit titles, and the live, social nature of certain games.  Our business developments and strategy position us to take advantage of these trends, as evidenced by the longevity of our Kim Kardashian: Hollywood and Racing Rivals titles and the continued strength of our Cooking Dash 2016 title.  We plan to focus on regularly updating and otherwise supporting our most successful games in order to ensure that those games monetize and retain users for even longer periods of time.

Our Products

 

We develop and publish a portfolio of mobile games designed to appeal to a broad cross section of the users of smartphones and tablet devices.  We are a leader in free-to-play action, celebrity, sports, and simulation genre mobile gaming, and intend to focus on developing games in these genres during 2016.  We plan to continue developing games based on our own intellectual property, including certain of our core franchises, such as Contract Killer,  Cooking Dash, Deer Hunter,  Diner Dash, and Frontline Commando, as well as our original branded games that incorporate third-party licensed content, such as Racing Rivals and Tap Sports Baseball.  In addition, we intend to continue building the premier Hollywood and other celebrity gaming platform.  As part of these efforts, in 2016 we have released our Kendall and Kylie game and plan to release games featuring pop icon Britney Spears, hip hop artist Nicki Minaj, celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay and singer and songwriter Taylor Swift.

 

Although users can download and play our free-to-play games free of charge, they can purchase virtual currency or virtual items to enhance their gameplay experience – we refer to these as “in-app purchases” or “micro-transactions.”  Some of the benefits that players receive from their in-app purchases include:

 

We sell virtual currency to consumers at various prices ranging from $0.99 to $99.99 (adjusted for local currencies for sales to players in foreign countries), which is consistent with storefront pricing guidelines, with the significant majority of player purchases occurring at the lower price points.  The digital storefronts generally share with us 70% of the consumers’ payments for in-app purchases, although these rates are generally lower for Android-based platforms in China; we do not have any special agreement or arrangement with respect to pricing or terms with any of the digital storefronts.  Consumers may also acquire virtual currency and other virtual items through gameplay or by completing offers, as described below.

 

In addition to in-app purchases of virtual currency, we also monetize our games through offers and in-game advertising.  Offers enable users to acquire virtual currency without paying cash but by instead taking specified actions, such as downloading another application, watching a short video, subscribing to a service or completing a survey.  We work with third parties to provide these offers to players of our free-to-play games, and we receive a payment from the third party offer provider based on consumer response to these offers.  We also work with third party advertising aggregators who embed advertising, such as ads appearing within the game between content transitions and as pop-up ads; the aggregators typically pay us based on the number of impressions, which is the number of times an advertisement is shown to a player.  In addition, from time to time we work directly with other application developers to include advertising for their applications in our games, and the developers pay us based on either the number of impressions in

our games or the number of users who download the developer’s application.

 

We have generally designed our games to incorporate social features that enhance the user’s gameplay experience, and we intend to continue to introduce more social and community-based features into many of our new titles by leveraging our Games as a Service, or GaaS, technology platform.  For example, Eternity Warriors 4 includes live chat functionality and enables users to create alliances with other players, Racing Rivals enables players across Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android platforms to compete against each other in real-time, synchronous racing, Kim Kardashian: Hollywood allows users to incorporate their friends into the game by sending them gifts and going on dates with them and Tap Sports Baseball allows players to challenge their friends to head-to-head matchups.  Many of our games also leverage technologies such as Apple’s Game Center or Facebook Connect, which enables players to compare their high scores and achievements with their friends and against the global leaderboard.  We intend to analyze each particular game release to determine the appropriate level of GaaS technology to be incorporated.

 

Our smartphone games historically have had “thick clients” due to their high production values and, in some cases, 3-D graphics.  A thick client game means that our games have a large file size, often 100 megabytes or more, that resides on the player’s device.  Because of the inherent limitations of the digital platforms and telecommunications networks, which, at best, only allow applications that are less than 100 megabytes to be downloaded over a carrier’s wireless network, users generally must download one of our games either via a wireless Internet (wifi) connection or initially to their computer and then load the game to their device. 

The table below sets forth the title, release date, and genre for each of the games we developed and launched worldwide in 2015: 

 

 

Following the success of Kim Kardashian: Hollywood and games incorporating licensed third-party brands and properties, like Racing Rivals, we increased our licensing efforts, both in terms of securing licenses to develop games based upon or significantly featuring specific licensed third-party intellectual property and for cameo appearances or to otherwise incorporate third-party intellectual property into our games.  In 2015, 2014, and 2013, games based on our own intellectual property accounted for approximately 42.1%, 62.7%, and 93.3% of our revenues, respectively.  The decrease from 2014 to 2015 was due to a full year of revenue from our Kim Kardashian: Hollywood and Racing Rivals titles, and lower revenue from certain of our titles based on our own intellectual property, including Deer Hunter,  Dino Hunter: Deadly Shores and Frontline Commando.   The significant drop in revenue from original intellectual property titles from 2013 to 2014 was primarily related to the success of our Kim Kardashian: Hollywood game, partial year contribution from Racing Rivals and to a lesser extent our Robocop and Hercules titles.  We expect that each of our new titles launched in 2016 will include third-party licensed brands, properties or other content.

For games based on or significantly incorporating licensed brands, properties or other content, we share a portion of our revenues with the respective licensors.  The average royalty rate that we paid on games based on licensed content (such as Kim Kardashian: Hollywood, Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation and Sniper X With Jason Statham) or significantly incorporating licensed content (such as Racing Rivals, Tap Sports Baseball 2015, and Tap Sports Football) was approximately 21.9% in 2015, 21.3% in 2014, and 44.8% in 2013 of gross revenues.  However, the individual royalty rates that we pay can be significantly above or below the average based on a variety of factors, such as the strength of the licensed brand, our development and porting obligations, and the platforms for which we are permitted to distribute the licensed content.

Although since 2010 we have focused our efforts on developing free-to-play games, we may create additional software applications and games that are sold for a fee.  For example, in 2015 we launched Deer Hunter VR on the Oculus store at a price to download of $4.99.  We have typically sold our premium games at prices ranging between $0.99 and $6.99, which is consistent with storefront pricing guidelines.  For our premium games, we generally receive 70% of the consumers’ payments from the digital storefront owner, as we do with sales of virtual currency.   

 

Sales, Marketing and Distribution

 

We market, sell and distribute our games primarily through direct-to-consumer digital storefronts, such as Apple’s App Store, the Google Play Store and Amazon’s Appstore.  In addition to publishing our smartphone games on direct-to-consumer digital storefronts, we also publish some of our titles on other platforms, such as the Mac App Store and Facebook.  The significant majority of our smartphone revenues have historically been derived from Apple’s iOS platform, which accounted for approximately 60.5%, 61.8%, and 59.6% of our total revenues in 2015, 2014 and 2013, respectively.  We generated the majority of these iOS-related revenues from the Apple App Store, which represented 51.7%, 52.2%, and 50.1% of our total revenues in 2015, 2014 and 2013, respectively, with the significant majority of such

revenues derived from in-app purchases.  We generated the balance of our iOS-related revenues from offers and advertisements in games distributed on the Apple App Store and, to a far lesser extent, sales of premium games.  In addition, we generated approximately 38.1%, 35.4%, and 30.5% of our total revenues in 2015, 2014 and 2013, respectively, from the Android platform.  We generated the majority of our Android-related revenues from in-app purchases and sales of premium games made through the Google Play Store, which represented 27.4%, 24.8%, and 19.2% of our total revenues in 2015, 2014 and 2013, respectively.  No other customer or digital storefront accounted for more than 10% of our total revenues in 2015, 2014 or 2013. 

 

Because of the fragmentation inherent in the Android platform, we need to “port” – or convert into separate versions – our games for a significant percentage of the thousands of Android-based devices that are currently commercially available, many of which have different technical requirements.  Since the number and variety of Android-based smartphones and tablets shipped worldwide continues to grow, we must maintain and enhance our porting capabilities, which require, and will likely continue to require, us to invest considerable resources in this area. 

 

As part of our efforts to successfully market our games on the direct-to-consumer digital storefronts, we attempt to educate the storefront owners about our title roadmap and seek to have our games featured or otherwise prominently placed within the storefront.  We believe that the featuring or prominent placement of our games facilitates organic user discovery and is likely to result in our games achieving a greater degree of commercial success.  We believe that a number of factors may influence the featuring or placement of a game, including:

 

 

 

 

 

 

In addition to our efforts to secure prominent featuring or placement for our games, we have also undertaken a number of marketing initiatives designed to acquire players and increase downloads of our games and increase sales of virtual currency, including:

 

 

In addition, certain of our games featuring celebrities or other licensed content like Kim Kardashian: Hollywood generate significant attention through word of mouth, particularly through social media channels.  We look to leverage existing social media presences in order to increase the virality and commercial success of our games.  In addition, in games like Racing Rivals, we are able to build and maintain a highly engaged community of players around the title.  Social-based methods for promoting our games include in-game events where players compete with and against each other, in-game social promotions and regular content updates, including in-game content that leverages real world events, such as holiday promotions or current events in the life of our celebrity partners.     

 

Development Studios

The internal studios that develop our games are located across the globe, including studio teams in San Francisco, San Mateo and Long Beach, California; Bellevue, Washington; Portland, Oregon; Toronto, Canada; Beijing, China; and Moscow, Russia.  In addition, as part of our central studio reorganization in 2016, we moved certain of our catalog titles to our Hyderabad, India location to run live operations and produce content updates for such games. 

Our President of Global Studios has primary responsibility for overseeing game development and monetization efforts across all of our first-party titles.  Under his leadership, we have reorganized our global studios utilizing a label structure.  We have appointed one leader for each of these four labels – action, celebrity, sports, and simulation – with each leader responsible for the long-term planning of his or her genre. 

Our studios are generally supported by central services personnel in our San Francisco, California headquarters who provide expertise with respect to areas such as game design, monetization, production, user experience, data analytics and live operations, with each studio leveraging such central services to varying degrees. During 2016, we plan to continue to grow certain of our studios to support new title launches scheduled for later in 2016 and 2017. 

 

Our game development process involves a significant amount of creativity, particularly with respect to developing original intellectual property franchises or games in which we license intellectual property from celebrities, Hollywood studios or other owners of brands, properties and other content.  Creative and technical studio expertise is necessary to design games that appeal to players who typically play in short bursts and to develop games that work well on mobile phones and tablets with their inherent limitations, such as small screen sizes and control buttons.

Our development personnel are located in five different countries across three continents, which results in certain inherent complexities.  To address these issues, we instituted our Glu University training program.  Glu University is designed to increase interaction among our studio teams, including having international studio team members regularly spend time in our U.S. studios.  The goal of this program is to ensure that we increase the uniformity, quality and commercial success of our games.  In addition, we believe that our new label structure, focusing our development efforts on action, celebrity, sports, and simulation games with each studio team specializing in one of these genres, will help ensure more efficient use of resources across our studios and further promote the sharing of expertise and best practices.     

 

Product Development

 

We have developed proprietary technologies and product development processes that are designed to enable us to rapidly and cost effectively develop and publish games that meet the expectations and preferences of consumers and the needs of our distributors.  These technologies and processes include:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Since the markets for our products are characterized by rapid technological change, particularly in the technical capabilities of mobile phones and tablets, and changing end-user preferences, continuous investment is required to innovate and publish new games, regularly update our games, and modify existing games for distribution on new platforms.  Our Global Chief Technology Officer has primary responsibility for ensuring our development studios have the technology they need to build high-quality games in a timely and efficient manner. 

 

We have recently instituted a number of new measures designed to ensure that we publish and launch games that have a greater likelihood of being commercially successful, while identifying earlier in the development process game concepts and designs that are unlikely to produce hits.  Central technical and product oversight now comes via three mechanisms:

 

 

 

 

In addition, we plan to continue holding detailed post-mortems for all products to review and analyze the positive and negative results from each new game launch.  These are in addition to our regular Glu University training sessions where we formally share best practices and learnings amongst the leadership of all functions of our global studios.

 

We use third-party development tools to create many of our games, including a game development engine licensed from Unity Technologies to create most of our newest games.  In addition, we rely on our own servers and third-party infrastructure to operate our games and to maintain and provide our analytics data.  In particular, a significant portion of game traffic is hosted by Amazon Web Services, which provides us server redundancy by using multiple locations on various distinct power grids, and we expect to continue utilizing Amazon for a significant portion of our hosting services for the foreseeable future.    

 

Research and development expenses were $72.9 million,  $64.3 million, and $46.9 million for 2015, 2014 and 2013, respectively. 

 

Seasonality

 

Many new smartphones and tablets are released in or shortly before the fourth calendar quarter to coincide with the holiday shopping season.  Because many players download our games soon after they purchase or receive their new

devices, we generally experience seasonal sales increases based on the holiday selling period.  Although we believe that the majority of this holiday impact occurs during the fourth quarter, some of this seasonality also occurs for us in our first calendar quarter due to some lag between device purchases and game purchases.  However, the impact of this seasonality on our operating results is significantly affected by our title release schedule.  In addition, companies’ advertising budgets are generally highest during the fourth quarter and decline significantly in the first quarter of the following year, which affects the revenues we derive from advertisements and offers in our games.  Conversely, our marketing expenses also increase in the fourth quarter, since demand for marketing is higher during the holiday season and this increased demand drives up marketing costs.

 

Competition

 

Developing, distributing and selling mobile games is a highly competitive business, characterized by frequent product introductions and rapidly emerging new platforms, technologies and storefronts.  For players, we compete primarily on the basis of game quality, brand and customer reviews.  We also compete more generally for the time and attention of users of smartphones and tablet devices who are spending ever-increasing amounts of time on social media applications.  We compete for promotional and digital storefront placement based on our relationship with the digital storefront owner, historical performance, game quality, perception of sales potential, customer reviews, and relationships with celebrities and other licensors of brands and other content.  For celebrities, brands and other content licensors, we compete based on royalty and other economic terms, historical financial performance of celebrity and other third-party licensed brand and property games, perceptions of development quality, porting abilities, speed of execution, distribution breadth and relationships with storefront owners.  We also compete for experienced and talented employees.

We compete with a continually increasing number of companies, including Activision, DeNA, Disney, Electronic Arts (EA Mobile), Gameloft, Gamevil, GREE, GungHo Online Entertainment, King Digital Entertainment (which recently agreed to be acquired by Activision), Nexon, Warner Brothers, and Zynga and many well-funded private companies, including Kabam, Machine Zone, Pocket Gems, Rovio, SGN Games, Storm 8/Team Lava, and Supercell.  In addition, we face competition from online game developers and distributors who are primarily focused on specific international markets.  We could also face increased competition if those companies choose to compete more directly in the United States or the other markets that are significant to us or if large companies with significant online presences such as Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook or Yahoo, choose to enter or expand in the games space or develop competing games.  We also compete for downloads and time spent on mobile devices with companies that develop popular social media and messaging applications, such as Facebook (with its Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp and other applications), Pinterest, Snapchat, Twitter, Vevo and YouTube and with companies that create non-gaming related software applications for celebrities. 

In addition, given the open nature of the development and distribution for smartphones and tablets and the relatively low barriers to entry, we also compete or will compete with a vast number of small companies and individuals who are able to create and launch games and other content for these devices using relatively limited resources and with relatively limited start-up time or expertise.  As an example of the competition that we face, it has been estimated that more than 2.1 million applications, including more than 500,000 active games, were available on Apple’s U.S. App Store as of February 29, 2016.  The proliferation of titles in these open developer channels makes it difficult for us to differentiate ourselves from other developers and to compete for players without substantially increasing our marketing expenses and development costs.

Some of our competitors and our potential competitors have one or more advantages over us, either globally or in particular geographic markets, which include:

 

 

Intellectual Property

 

Our intellectual property is an essential element of our business.  We use a combination of trademark, copyright, trade secret and other intellectual property laws, confidentiality agreements and license agreements to protect our intellectual property.  Our employees and independent contractors are required to sign agreements acknowledging that all inventions, trade secrets, works of authorship, developments and other processes generated by them on our behalf are our property, and assigning to us any ownership that they may claim in those works.  We also vigorously defend our intellectual property.  For example, in November 2014, we filed a complaint against Hothead Games, Inc. (“Hothead”) in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California alleging that Hothead had willfully infringed certain of our copyrights and trade dress contained in our Deer Hunter 2014 game through Hothead’s release of its game, Kill Shot.  On August 3, 2015, we entered into a settlement agreement with Hothead in which Hothead agreed to make payments to us, including ongoing payments and we agreed to allow Hothead to continue to publish the Kill Shot game.  Despite our precautions, it may be possible for third parties to obtain and use without our consent intellectual property that we own or license.  Unauthorized use of our intellectual property by third parties, including piracy, and the expenses incurred in protecting our intellectual property rights, may adversely affect our business.  In addition, some of our competitors have in the past released games that are nearly identical to successful games released by their competitors in an effort to confuse the market and divert users from the competitor’s game to the copycat game.  To the extent that these tactics are employed with respect to any of our games, it could reduce our revenues.

 

Our trademarks that have been registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office include Glu, our 2-D ‘g’ character logo, our 3-D ‘g’ character logo and several of our game titles, including Blood & Glory, Contract Killer, Cooking Dash, Deer Hunter, Diner Dash, Eternity Warriors, Frontline Commando, Gun Bros, Heroes of Destiny, Racing Rivals and Tap Sports.  In addition, we have trademark applications pending with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for other of our game titles.  For certain titles we do not yet have, and do not intend to seek, trademark registration.  We also own, or have applied to own, one or more registered trademarks in certain foreign countries, depending on the relevance of each brand to other markets. Registrations of both U.S. and foreign trademarks are renewable every ten years.

 

We have one patent issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and have eight patent applications pending, including two that we inherited through acquisitions.  In addition, we have an international patent issued through the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), which corresponds to our issued U.S. patent, and we have four international patent applications pending with the PCT, which correspond to four of our U.S. patent applications.

We also use third-party development tools to create many of our games, including a game development engine licensed from Unity Technologies to create most of our newest games. 

From time to time, we encounter disputes over rights and obligations concerning intellectual property.  If we do not prevail in these disputes, we may lose some or all of our intellectual property protection, be enjoined from further sales of our games or other applications determined to infringe the rights of others, and/or be forced to pay substantial royalties to a third party, any of which would have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations.

 

Government Regulation 

We are subject to various federal, state and international laws and regulations that affect our business, including those relating to the privacy and security of customer and employee personal information and those relating to the Internet, behavioral tracking, mobile applications, advertising and marketing activities, sweepstakes and contests, and gambling.  Additional laws in all of these areas are likely to be passed in the future, which could result in significant limitations on or changes to the ways in which we can collect, use, host, store or transmit the personal information and data of our customers or employees, communicate with our customers, and deliver products and services, or may significantly increase our compliance costs.  As our business expands to include new uses or collection of data that are subject to privacy or security regulations, our compliance requirements and costs will increase and we may be subject to increased regulatory scrutiny.

Financial Information about Segments and Geographic Areas

 

We manage our operations and allocate resources as a single reporting segment.  Financial information about our segment and geographic areas is incorporated into this section by reference to Note 11 of Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements contained in Item 8 of this report.  In addition, financial information regarding our operations, assets and liabilities, including our total net revenue and net income / (loss) for the years ended December 31, 2015, 2014 and 2013 and our total assets as of December 31, 2015 and 2014, is included in our Consolidated Financial Statements contained in Item 8 of this report.

Employees

 

As of December 31, 2015, we had 750 employees, of which 491 were based in the United States and Canada, 130 were based in Europe and 129 were based in Asia.  Our employees in China are represented by a labor union.  We have not experienced any employment-related work stoppages and consider relations with our employees to be good.  We believe that our future success depends in part on our continued ability to hire, assimilate and retain qualified employees.

Executive Officers

 

The following table shows Glu’s executive officers as of March 1, 2016 and their areas of responsibility.  Their biographies follow the table.

 

Niccolo M. de Masi has served as our President and Chief Executive Officer and as one of our directors since January 2010, as interim Chairman of our board of directors from July 2014 to December 2014 and as the Chairman of our board of directors since December 2014.  Prior to joining Glu, Mr. de Masi was the Chief Executive Officer and President of Hands-On Mobile, a mobile technology company and developer and publisher of mobile entertainment, from October 2009 to December 2009, and previously served as the President of Hands-On Mobile from March 2008 to

October 2009.  Prior to joining Hands-On Mobile, Mr. de Masi was the Chief Executive Officer of Monstermob Group PLC, a mobile entertainment company, from June 2006 to February 2007.  Mr. de Masi joined Monstermob in 2004 and, prior to becoming its Chief Executive Officer, held positions as its Managing Director and as its Chief Operating Officer, where he was responsible for formulating and implementing Monstermob’s growth and product strategy.  Prior to joining Monstermob, Mr. de Masi worked in a variety of corporate finance and operational roles within the technology, media and telecommunications (TMT) sector, beginning his career with JP Morgan on both the TMT debt capital markets and mergers and acquisitions teams in London.  He has also worked as a physicist with Siemens Solar and within the Strategic Planning and Development divisions of Technicolor.  Mr. de Masi has served as a director of Xura, Inc. since November 2015.  Mr. de Masi holds an M.A. degree in Physics and an MSci. degree in Electronic Engineering—both from Cambridge University.

 

Eric R. Ludwig has served as our Chief Operating Officer since October 2014, as our Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer since October 2011 and as our Chief Financial Officer since August 2008.  Mr. Ludwig previously held the position of Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Administrative Officer from September 2010 to October 2011.  Prior to becoming our Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Ludwig served as our Vice President, Finance, Interim Chief Financial Officer from May 2008 to August 2008, served as our Vice President, Finance from April 2005 to May 2008 and served as our Director of Finance from January 2005 to April 2005.  In addition, Mr. Ludwig has served as our Assistant Secretary since July 2006.  Prior to joining us, from January 1996 to January 2005, Mr. Ludwig held various positions at Instill Corporation, an on-demand supply chain software company, most recently as Chief Financial Officer, Vice President, Finance and Corporate Secretary.  Prior to Instill, Mr. Ludwig was Corporate Controller at Camstar Systems, Inc., an enterprise manufacturing execution and quality systems software company, from May 1994 to January 1996.  He also worked at Price Waterhouse L.L.P. from May 1989 to May 1994. Mr. Ludwig holds a B.S. in Commerce from Santa Clara University and is a Certified Public Accountant (inactive).

 

Nick Earl has served as our President of Global Studios since November 2015.  Before joining us, from November 2014 to September 2015, Mr. Earl served as President of Worldwide Studios at Kabam.  From September 2001 to October 2014, Mr. Earl served in several management positions at Electronic Arts, including most recently as Senior Vice President & General Manager of EA Mobile.  From 1999 to 2001, Mr. Earl served as VP Product Development at Eidos.  From April 1993 to March 1999, Mr. Earl served as an executive producer / GM at The 3DO Company.  Mr. Earl holds a B.A. in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley.

 

Chris Akhavan has served as our President of Publishing since April 2013.  Before joining us, from January 2010 to April 2013, Mr. Akhavan served in several management positions at Tapjoy, Inc., a provider of incentivized offers, most recently as Senior Vice President, Partnerships.  From April 2009 to January 2010, Mr. Akhavan was a Manager, Publisher Network at RockYou!, a social gaming company, and from October 2007 to November 2008, he served as a Strategic Partner Manager at VideoEgg (now SAY Media), an advertising inventory and platform provider.  Mr. Akhavan holds a B.A. in Economics from the University of California at Santa Cruz.

 

Scott J. Leichtner has served as our Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary since September 2010.  Mr. Leichtner joined Glu in June 2009 as our Senior Corporate Counsel.  Prior to joining us, Mr. Leichtner was a corporate attorney at Fenwick & West LLP, a law firm focused on serving technology clients, from October 1997 to May 2009.  Mr. Leichtner holds an A.B. in Political Science from Duke University and a J.D. from the University of Michigan.

 

Item 1A. Risk Factors

Our business is subject to many risks and uncertainties, which may affect our future financial performance. If any of the events or circumstances described below occurs, our business and financial performance could be harmed, our actual results could differ materially from our expectations and the market value of our stock could decline. The risks and uncertainties discussed below are not the only ones we face. There may be additional risks and uncertainties not currently known to us or that we currently do not believe are material that may harm our business and financial performance. Because of the risks and uncertainties discussed below, as well as other variables affecting our operating results, past financial performance should not be considered as a reliable indicator of future performance and investors should not use historical trends to anticipate results or trends in future periods.

 

We have a history of net losses, may incur substantial net losses in the future and may not achieve and sustain profitability or growth in future periods.

 

We have incurred significant losses since inception, including a net loss of $7.2 million in 2015.  As of December 31, 2015, we had an accumulated deficit of $251.2 million.  We expect our costs to continue to rise as we implement additional initiatives designed to increase revenue, including developing new games with greater complexity, higher production values and deeper social features, running live operations on our games, and increasing headcount at our studios to staff new product development teams (particularly with respect to the new celebrity titles we plan to launch in 2016 and 2017, which we believe may require differentiated game engines to be successful and avoid cannibalization of revenue from our other celebrity games).  Our costs are also rising as we increase the amount we spend in acquiring new players and otherwise marketing our new titles (particularly since advertising costs in our industry have generally been rising and downloads of our games are decreasing as users spend more time on alternative software applications, such as social media and messaging applications), and increase the amount we pay for licenses to third-party intellectual property (particularly with regards to celebrity licensors).  If our revenue does not increase at a rate sufficient to offset these additional expenses (including revenue on a per title basis since we anticipate launching fewer games in 2016 than we have in recent years), if the launch dates for our games are delayed, if we experience unexpected significant increases in operating expenses or if we are required to take additional charges related to impairments or restructurings, we will continue to incur losses.  Given the declines in overall downloads of mobile gaming applications as compared to non-gaming applications, and the significant amount of time and attention users are dedicating to social media and other non-gaming applications, increasing revenue has been, and may continue to be, challenging.  This industry trend has been negatively impacting us, as the number of downloads of sequels to certain of our most successful franchises, including the launches of Deer Hunter 2016 and Eternity Warriors 4 have downloaded at significantly lower rates as compared to predecessor versions.

If we fail to develop and publish new mobile games that achieve market acceptance, as well as continue to enhance our existing games, particularly our most successful games, our revenue would suffer.

Our business depends on developing and publishing mobile games that consumers will download and spend time and money playing.  We must continue to invest significant resources in research and development, technology, analytics and marketing to introduce new games and continue to update our successful free-to-play games, and we often must make decisions about these matters well in advance of a product release to timely implement them.  Our success depends, in part, on unpredictable and volatile factors beyond our control, including consumer preferences, competing gaming and non-gaming related applications, new mobile platforms and the availability of other entertainment activities.  If our games do not meet consumer expectations, or they are not brought to market in a timely and effective manner, our business, operating results and financial condition would be harmed.  Historically, we have focused on developing and publishing shooters and other action games primarily directed at male audiences. While our Kim Kardashian: Hollywood, Cooking Dash 2016, and recently launched Kendall and Kylie games have been commercially successful, our Katy Perry Pop game was not commercially successful and meeting consumer expectations could prove more challenging for us in the future as we release a greater number of games that are primarily targeted toward female audiences (such as other games under development in the celebrity and resource management genres).  Even if our games are successfully introduced and initially adopted, a failure to continue to update them with compelling content or a subsequent shift in the entertainment preferences of consumers could cause a decline in our games’ popularity that could materially reduce our revenue and harm our business, operating results and financial condition, which effect would be magnified for our most successful games.  It is difficult to predict when and how quickly one of our games will decline.  As a result of the life cycle of our games, our business depends on our ability to consistently and timely launch new games or versions of games that achieve significant popularity and have the potential to become franchise games, and if, as we anticipate, we launch fewer titles in 2016 than in prior years, we may be less likely to launch a game that achieves significant commercial success.  If rates of decline are higher than expected in a particular quarterly period and/or we experience delays in the launch of new games that we expect to offset these declines or the new games we launch fail to download and/or monetize as we anticipate, we may not meet our expectations or the expectations of securities analysts or investors for a given quarter.  In addition, our Kim Kardashian: Hollywood game benefitted significantly from awareness of the game through media coverage and social media channels, and such viral success can be difficult to predict or to repeat in the future.  For example, even

though Katy Perry has more social media followers than Kim Kardashian West, Katy Perry Pop generated far fewer downloads than Kim Kardashian: Hollywood.  Furthermore, we compete for the discretionary spending of consumers, who face a vast array of entertainment choices, including social media and other non-gaming related apps, games played on personal computers and consoles, television, movies, sports and the Internet.  If we are unable to sustain sufficient interest in our games compared to other forms of entertainment, our business and financial results would be seriously harmed. 

Successfully developing and monetizing free-to-play games is a challenging business model.

In early 2010, we changed our business model to focus on becoming a leading developer and publisher of “free-to-play” games for smartphone and tablet devices.  Free-to-play games are games that a player can download and play for free, but which allow players to access a variety of additional content and features for a fee and to engage with various advertisements and offers that generate revenue for us.  The most successful recent launches of free-to-play games tend to include socio-competitive gameplay, player versus player activities, regularly updated content and other complex technological and creative attributes associated with Games-as-a-Service, or GaaS, offerings.  While we are working to include such features in our games, many of our historical games did not include some or all of these GaaS features, and we may not successfully execute this transition.  In addition, following the success of our Kim Kardashian: Hollywood game, we expanded our efforts to build the premier celebrity gaming platform.  We are partnering with A-list celebrities to selectively collaborate on future games, and if those games fail to perform to expected levels, such as occurred with our Katy Perry Pop title, our revenue could be limited and our business and operating results would suffer.  Our efforts to develop free-to-play games, celebrity and other licensed property games and our transition towards becoming a GaaS company may prove unsuccessful or, even if successful, it may take more time than we anticipate to achieve significant revenue because, among other reasons:

If we do not achieve a sufficient return on our investment with respect to our free-to-play business model, it will negatively affect our operating results and may require us to formulate a new business strategy.

We rely on a very small portion of our total players for nearly all of our revenue that we derive from in-app purchases.

 

We rely on a very small portion of our total players for nearly all of our revenue derived from in-app purchases (as opposed to advertisements and incentivized offers) and installation rates and user-growth have declined for us with many of our recent product launches.  Since the launch of our first free-to-play titles in the fourth quarter of 2010, the percentage of unique paying players for our largest revenue-generating free-to-play games has typically been less than 2%, when measured as the number of unique paying users on a given day divided by the number of unique users on that day, though this percentage fluctuates, and it may be higher than 2% for some of our games during specific, relatively short time periods, such as immediately following worldwide launch or the week following content updates, marketing campaigns or certain other events.  To significantly increase our revenue, we must increase the number of downloads of our games, increase the number of players who convert into paying players by making in-app purchases, increase the amount that our paying players spend in our games and/or increase the length of time our players generally play our games.  We might not succeed in our efforts to increase the monetization rates of our users, particularly if we do not increase the amount of social features in our games or otherwise succeed in our transition to becoming a GaaS company.  If we are unable to convert non-paying players into paying players, or if we are unable to retain our paying players or if the average amount of revenue that we generate from our players does not increase or declines, our business may not grow, our financial results will suffer, and our stock price may decline.

We derive the majority of our revenue from Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store, and if we are unable to maintain a good relationship with each of Apple and Google or if either of these storefronts were unavailable for any prolonged period of time, our business will suffer.

The majority of our smartphone revenue has historically been derived from Apple’s iOS platform, which accounted for 60.5% of our total revenue for 2015 compared with 61.8% and 59.6% of our total revenue for 2014 and 2013, respectively.  We generated the majority of this iOS-related revenue from the Apple App Store, which represented 51.7 %, 52.2%, and 50.1% of our total revenue in 2015, 2014, and 2013, respectively, with the significant majority of such revenue derived from in-app purchases. We generated the balance of our iOS-related revenue from offers and advertisements in games distributed on the Apple App Store and, to a far lesser extent, sales of premium games. In addition, we derived approximately 38.1 %, 35.4%, and 30.5% of our total revenue for 2015, 2014, and 2013, respectively, from the Android platform. We generated the majority of our Android-related revenue from the Google Play Store, which represented 27.4%, 24.8%, and 19.2% of our total revenue for 2015, 2014, and 2013, respectively, with the significant majority of such revenue derived from in-app purchases. We believe that we have good relationships with each of Apple and Google, which have contributed to the majority of our games released in the last several years being featured on their storefronts when they were commercially released.  If we do not continue to receive prominent featuring, users may find it more difficult to discover our games and we may not generate significant revenue from them.  We may also be required to spend significantly more on marketing campaigns to generate substantial revenue on these platforms.  In addition, currently neither Apple nor Google charges a publisher when it features one of their apps.  If either Apple or Google were to charge publishers to feature an app, it could cause our marketing expenses to increase considerably.  Accordingly, any change or deterioration in our relationship with Apple or Google could materially harm our business and likely cause our stock price to decline.  

 We also rely on the continued functioning of the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store.  In the past these digital storefronts have been unavailable for short periods of time or experienced issues with their in-app purchasing functionality.  For example, on March 11, 2015, the Apple App Store experienced an approximately 12-hour global outage, which resulted in players and potential players of our games being unable to download our games and unable to make in-app purchases within our games during such outage.  If such events recur on a prolonged basis or other similar issues arise that impact our ability to generate revenue from these storefronts, it would have a material adverse effect on our revenue and operating results.  In addition, if these storefront operators fail to provide high levels of service, our players’ ability to access our games may be interrupted or players may not receive the virtual currency or goods for which they have paid, which may adversely affect our brand.

The operators of digital storefronts on which we publish our free-to-play games and the advertising channels through which we acquire some of our players in many cases have the unilateral ability to change and interpret the terms of our and others’ contracts with them.

We distribute our free-to-play games through direct-to-consumer digital storefronts, for which the distribution terms and conditions are often “click through” agreements that we are not able to negotiate with the storefront operator.  For example, we are subject to each of Apple’s and Google’s standard click-through terms and conditions for application developers, which govern the promotion, distribution and operation of apps, including our games, on their storefronts.  Each of Apple and Google can unilaterally change its standard terms and conditions with no prior notice to us.  In addition, the agreement terms can be vague and subject to changing interpretations by the storefront operator.  Further, these storefront operators typically have the right to prohibit a developer from distributing its applications on its storefront if the developer violates its standard terms and conditions.  For example, in the second quarter of 2011, Apple began prohibiting virtual currency-incented advertising offers in games that directed users to download other applications from the Apple App Store in order to complete the offer.  These offers accounted for approximately one-third of our smartphone revenue during the three months ended June 30, 2011, and our inability to subsequently use such offers negatively impacted our smartphone revenue thereafter.  In addition, Apple informed us early in the fourth quarter of 2012 that we could no longer include links to Tapjoy’s HTML5 website in our games, which negatively impacted our ability to generate revenue through incented offers.  Apple has implemented restrictions related to games that include guns, including changing its game rating methodology, which has resulted in all of our games that include gun violence

receiving a 17+ rating, and prohibiting some depictions of guns in game icons and other storefront art; these restrictions, could potentially negatively impact the number of people playing these “shooter” games and the revenue we generate from these games.  During the second quarter of 2014, there were reports that Apple was considering prohibiting some types of virtual currency-incented video advertising in games that promoted other applications available on the Apple App Store.  These incented video advertisements generate a meaningful percentage of our overall revenue, and any prohibition of these advertisements would have had a negative impact on our revenue.  In the fourth quarter of 2014, Apple informed developers that beginning on February 1, 2015 all new applications, and beginning June 1, 2015 all updates to existing applications, submitted to the Apple App Store must include 64-bit support.  We did not previously build our games to include 64-bit support nor did the Unity development engine that we utilize to create many of our games support 64-bit development; however, we worked with Unity to ensure that we met Apple’s requirement.  Building our games to support 64-bit development has increased the file sizes of our games making it more difficult for players to download our games and potentially negatively impacting the number of downloads and active users of our titles, particularly for those games where we are unable to keep file sizes below 100 megabytes, which is the maximum file size that can currently be downloaded over any carrier’s wireless network (requiring download over wifi networks).  In addition, we believe that Apple may have made changes to its algorithms that determine the App Store’s Top Free application rankings, as games currently have a more difficult time achieving and maintaining Top Free rankings than was the case 12 to 18 months ago.  The Top Free rankings are one of the primary means for consumers to discover our games, and to the extent that algorithm changes have occurred that make it more difficult for mobile games to reach and maintain Top Free spots, it would contribute to fewer installs of our games.  If Apple or Google, or any other key storefront operator, determines that we or one of our key vendors are violating its standard terms and conditions, by a new interpretation or otherwise, or prohibits us from distributing our games on its storefront, it would materially harm our business and likely cause our stock price to significantly decline.

In addition, in the first quarter of 2014, Facebook prohibited HasOffers, whose software development kit we had incorporated into our games to track advertising metrics, from participating in Facebook’s mobile measurement program because Facebook asserted that HasOffers had violated its agreement with Facebook.  As a result, we removed HasOffers’ software development kit from our games and replaced it with software from a new vendor.  While this change did not adversely impact our revenue or operations, any similar changes or prohibitions in the future could negatively impact our revenue or otherwise materially harm our business, and we may not receive significant or any advance warning of such changes.

The markets in which we operate are highly competitive, and many of our competitors have significantly greater resources than we do. 

Developing, distributing and selling mobile games is a highly competitive business, characterized by frequent product introductions and rapidly emerging new platforms, technologies and storefronts.  For players, we compete primarily on the basis of game quality, brand and customer reviews.  We also compete more generally for the time and attention of users of smartphones and tablet devices who are spending ever-increasing amounts of time on social media and messaging applications.  We compete for promotional and digital storefront placement based on our relationship with the digital storefront owner, historical performance, game quality, perception of sales potential, customer reviews and relationships with celebrities and other licensors of brands and other content.  For celebrities, brands and other content licensors, we compete based on royalty and other economic terms, historical financial performance of celebrity and other third-party licensed brand and property games, perceptions of development quality, porting abilities, speed of execution, distribution breadth and relationships with storefront owners.  We also compete for experienced and talented employees.

We compete with a continually increasing number of companies, including Activision, DeNA, Disney, Electronic Arts (EA Mobile), Gameloft, Gamevil, GREE, GungHo Online Entertainment, King Digital Entertainment (which has recently agreed to be acquired by Activision), Nexon, Warner Brothers, and Zynga and many well-funded private companies, including Kabam, Machine Zone, Pocket Gems, Rovio, SGN Games, Storm 8/Team Lava, and Supercell.  In addition, we face competition from online game developers and distributors who are primarily focused on specific international markets.  We could also face increased competition if those companies choose to compete more directly in the United States or the other markets that are significant to us or if large companies with significant online presences such as Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook or Yahoo, choose to enter or expand in the games space or develop competing games.  We

also compete for downloads and time spent on mobile devices with companies that develop popular social media and messaging applications, such as Facebook (with its Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp and other applications), Pinterest, Snapchat, Twitter, Vevo and YouTube and with companies that create non-gaming related software applications for celebrities. 

In addition, given the open nature of the development and distribution for smartphones and tablets and the relatively low barriers to entry, we also compete or will compete with a vast number of small companies and individuals who are able to create and launch games and other content for these devices using relatively limited resources and with relatively limited start-up time or expertise.  As an example of the competition that we face, it has been estimated that more than 2.1 million applications, including more than 500,000 active games, were available on Apple’s U.S. App Store as of February 29, 2016.  The proliferation of titles in these open developer channels makes it difficult for us to differentiate ourselves from other developers and to compete for players without substantially increasing our marketing expenses and development costs.

Some of our competitors and our potential competitors have one or more advantages over us, either globally or in particular geographic markets, which include:

 

If we are unable to compete effectively or we are not as successful as our competitors in our target markets, our sales could decline, our margins could decline and we could lose market share, any of which would materially harm our business, operating results and financial condition.

Our players may decide to select competing forms of entertainment instead of playing our games.

We also face competition for the leisure time, attention and discretionary spending of our players.  Other forms of leisure time activities, such as social media and messaging applications, personal computer and console games, television, movies, sports, and the Internet, are generally much larger and more well-established options for consumers.  In addition, competition for the attention of players on their mobile devices is intense, as the number of apps on mobile devices is increasing dramatically.  In particular, non-gaming applications for mobile devices, such as social media and messaging, music and dating applications, have become increasingly popular, making it more difficult for mobile games to generate the same level of consumer interest and number of downloads as in prior periods.  In addition, celebrities like Kim Kardashian West, Kylie Jenner and Kendall Jenner, have launched their own personal media applications, and those applications, or similar applications launched by other of our celebrity partners could compete with our celebrity games for the time, attention and spending of our players.  If our players do not find our games to be compelling or if other leisure time activities are perceived by our players to offer greater variety, affordability, interactivity and overall enjoyment, our business could be materially and adversely affected.

Our financial results could vary significantly from quarter to quarter and are difficult to predict, which in turn could cause volatility in our stock price.

Our revenue and operating results could vary significantly from quarter to quarter due to a variety of factors, many of which are outside of our control.  As a result, comparing our operating results on a period-to-period basis may not be meaningful.  In addition, we may not be able to accurately predict our future revenue or results of operations.  This unpredictability may become more pronounced in future quarters as we anticipate releasing fewer games in 2016 as compared to recent years.  We base our current and future expense levels on our internal operating plans and sales forecasts, and our operating costs are to a large extent fixed.  As a result, we may not be able to reduce our costs sufficiently to compensate for an unexpected shortfall in revenue, and even a small shortfall in revenue could disproportionately and adversely affect financial results for that quarter.

In addition to other risk factors discussed in this section, factors that may contribute to the variability of our quarterly results include:

 

If we do not successfully establish and maintain awareness of our brand and games, if we fail to develop high-quality, engaging games that are differentiated from our prior games, if we incur excessive expenses promoting and maintaining our brand or our games or if our games contain defects or objectionable content, our operating results and financial condition could be harmed. 

We believe that establishing and maintaining our brand is critical to establishing a direct relationship with players who purchase our products from direct-to-consumer channels and to maintaining our existing relationships with distributors and content licensors, as well as potentially developing new such relationships.  Increasing awareness of our brand and recognition of our games is particularly important in connection with our strategic focus of developing games based on our own intellectual property, games based on our celebrity partners and our other game franchises that incorporate third-party brands and properties.  Our ability to promote the Glu brand and increase recognition of our games depends on our ability to develop high-quality, engaging games, including integrating the level of social and community features appropriate for a game’s target audience and partnering with celebrities with fan bases that can support successful mobile games.  If consumers, digital storefront owners and branded content owners do not perceive our existing games as high-quality or if we introduce new games that are not favorably received by them, then we may not succeed in building brand recognition and brand loyalty in the marketplace. In addition, globalizing and extending our brand and recognition of our games is costly and involves extensive management time to execute successfully, particularly as we expand our efforts to increase awareness of our brand and games among international consumers.  Although we make significant sales and marketing expenditures in connection with the launch of our games, these efforts may not succeed in increasing awareness of our brand or the new games.  If we fail to increase and maintain brand awareness and consumer recognition of our

games, our potential revenue could be limited, our costs could increase and our business, operating results and financial condition could suffer.

In addition, if a game contains objectionable content, we could experience damage to our reputation and brand.  Our games may contain violence or other content that some consumers may find objectionable.  For example, Apple has assigned each of our shooter games a 17-and-older rating due to its violence.  In addition, Google required us to submit two versions of our Blood & Glory and Contract Killer:  Zombies games, one of which did not depict blood.  Despite these ratings and precautions, consumers may be offended by some of our game content and children to whom these games are not targeted may choose to play them without parental permission nonetheless.  In addition, our employees or employees of outside developers could include hidden features in one our games without our knowledge, which might contain profanity, graphic violence, sexually explicit or otherwise objectionable material.  If consumers believe that a game we published contains objectionable content, it could harm our brand, consumers could refuse to download it or demand a refund for any in-app purchases, and could pressure the digital storefront operators to no longer allow us to publish the game on their platforms.  Similarly, if any of our games are introduced with defects or have playability issues, we may receive negative user reviews and our brand may be damaged.  These issues could be exacerbated if our customer service department does not timely and adequately address issues that our players have encountered with our games.

We have depended on a small number of games for a significant portion of our revenue in recent fiscal periods.  If these games do not succeed or we do not release highly successful new games, our revenue would decline. 

In the mobile gaming industry, new games are frequently introduced, but a relatively small number of games account for a significant portion of industry sales.  Similarly, a significant portion of our revenue comes from a limited number of games, although the games in that group have shifted over time.  Our top five titles for 2015 (Kim Kardashian: Hollywood,  Racing Rivals,  Deer Hunter 2014,  Contract Killer: Sniper and Cooking Dash 2016) generated approximately 71.6% of our revenues for 2015, while our top five titles for 2014 (Kim Kardashian: Hollywood,  Deer Hunter 2014,  Eternity Warriors 3,  Racing Rivals and Dino Hunter: Deadly Shores) generated approximately 71.4% of our revenues for 2014. In particular, Kim Kardashian: Hollywood which was launched in June 2014, remains our largest revenue generating title, having generated 30.7% and 27.5% of our revenues in 2015 and 2014, respectively.  In addition, Racing Rivals and Deer Hunter 2014 each accounted for more than 10% of our revenue in 2015.  However, we expect revenue from each of our top five titles from 2015 to decline in 2016.  In addition, revenue from Kim Kardashian: Hollywood is in part tied to the continued popularity of Kim Kardashian West and her marketing efforts though social media and other channels, and we have little to no control over these matters and they are hard for us to predict.  Accordingly, we must continue to launch new games that generate significant revenue to continue to grow revenue in the future, which we have sometimes failed to do.  For example, the Katy Perry Pop title we launched in the fourth quarter of 2015 failed to generate meaningful revenue.  In addition, sequels to some of our most successful game franchises have failed to download and monetize at the levels of predecessor versions, and we have experienced disappointing results from several recent games based on film franchises, including our James Bond: World of Espionage game.  Failure to differentiate, innovate and otherwise improve our game franchises would lead to revenue declines. 

We expect a significant percentage of our product launches in the next 12 to 18 months to be in the celebrity genre, including three titles in 2016 featuring female musicians.  If these games do not succeed, our operating results and financial condition could be harmed and investors may question the viability of our celebrity product strategy.

In addition to Kim Kardashian: Hollywood, we have launched or intend to launch within the next 12 months, games featuring Jason Statham, Katy Perry, Kendall and Kylie Jenner, Britney Spears, Nicki Minaj, Gordon Ramsay, and Taylor Swift, and have entered into agreements with additional celebrities to create games that we expect to launch by the end of 2017.  Games featuring celebrities will account for a significant percentage of our overall title releases in 2016, and will also account for a significant portion of our forecasted revenues.  We face a number of risks in our ability to successfully develop and monetize games featuring celebrities.  For example, although Kim Kardashian: Hollywood has been by far the most successful mobile game featuring a celebrity and our Kendall and Kylie game has also achieved initial success following its worldwide launch in February 2016, we and other game developers have failed to achieve success with games featuring other celebrities, including our Katy Perry Pop title.  Accordingly, it is possible that there is something unique about the Kardashian and Jenner family and the nature of their celebrity that has led to the success of Kim

Kardashian: Hollywood and Kendall and Kylie that will not be replicable in other games featuring other celebrities, particularly musicians.  We plan to release three new games in 2016 featuring female musicians – Britney Spears, Nicki Minaj and Taylor Swift – and it is possible that games featuring these celebrities will not be commercially successful in the same manner as our only prior game featuring a female musician, Katy Perry Pop.  In addition, some of the celebrities with whom we have partnered may have similar fan bases, and any actual overlap in the audiences for our different celebrity games could result in market saturation or cannibalization of revenue of our own games.  We must also differentiate our various celebrity games in order to ensure our games remain fresh and engaging and to satisfy our celebrity partners.  However, differentiating the game engines for our various celebrity titles could lead to increased development costs and potential product launch delays and may result in games that do not monetize as well as Kim Kardashian: Hollywood or Kendall and Kylie.  If our new celebrity games are not successful, our business and operating results would suffer and investors may question the viability of our celebrity product strategy.

We rely on a combination of our own servers and technology and third-party infrastructure to operate our games. If we experience any system or network failures, unexpected technical problems, cyber attacks or any other interruption to our games, it could reduce our sales, increase costs, or result in a loss of revenue or loss of end users of our games.

We rely on digital storefronts and other third-party networks to deliver games to our players and on their or other third parties’ billing systems to track and account for our game downloads.  We also rely on our own servers and third-party infrastructure to operate our connected games, and our reliance on such third-party infrastructure and our GaaS technology platform will increase as we continue transitioning to becoming a GaaS company.  In particular, a significant portion of our game traffic is hosted by Amazon Web Services, which service provides server redundancy and uses multiple locations on various distinct power grids.  Amazon may terminate its agreement with us upon 30 days’ notice.  Amazon experienced a power outage during the second quarter of 2012, which affected the playability of our games for approximately one day.  In addition, Amazon effected a large scale maintenance reboot of a portion of its systems during September 2014 to remedy a security flaw, and in September 2015, there was an outage of AWS Dynamo DB that affected our Deer Hunter 2016 game.  While none of these events adversely impacted our business, a similar outage of a longer duration could.  In addition, the operation of our online-only games that we began releasing in the fourth quarter of 2013 will depend on the continued functionality of our GaaS technology platform.  As a result, we could experience unexpected technical problems with regard to the operation of our online-only games, particularly if the number of concurrent users playing our games is significantly more than we anticipate.  Any technical problem with, cyber attack on, or loss of access to these third parties’ or our systems, servers or other technologies, including the GaaS technology platform, could result in the inability of end users to download or play our games, cause interruption to gameplay, prevent the completion of billing for a game or result in the loss of users’ virtual currency or other in-app purchases, interfere with access to some aspects of our games or result in the theft of end-user personal information.  For example, in July 2014, users could not play our Kim Kardashian: Hollywood game for about six hours due to a problem with one of our servers, and in November 2014, March 2015 and April 2015, we experienced similar outages with respect to our Racing Rivals game.  In addition, at launch in September 2015, our Eternity Warriors 4 title experienced intermittent server issues that left the game temporarily inoperable.  If users are unable to access and play our games for any period of time, if virtual assets are lost, or if users do not receive their purchased virtual currency, we may receive negative publicity and game ratings, we may lose players of our games, we may be required to issue refunds, and we may become subject to regulatory investigation or class action litigation, any of which would negatively affect our business.  Any of these problems could require us to incur substantial repair costs, distract management from operating our business and result in a loss of revenue.

Cyber attacks, security breaches, and computer viruses could harm our business, reputation, brand and operating results.

Cyber attacks, security breaches, and computer viruses have occurred on our systems in the past and may occur on our systems in the future. We store sensitive information, including personal information about our employees.  In addition, our games involve the storage and transmission of players’ personal information in our facilities and on our equipment, networks and corporate systems run by us or managed by third-parties including Apple, Google, and Facebook.   Security breaches of our systems or the systems of third-parties on which we rely could expose us to litigation, remediation costs, increased costs for security measures, loss of revenue, damage to our reputation and potential liability.  Our player data,

corporate systems, third-party systems and security measures may be breached due to the actions of outside parties, employee error, malfeasance, a combination of these, or otherwise, and, as a result, an unauthorized party may obtain access to our data, our employees’ data, our players’ data or our advertisers’ data. We were the victim of a cyber attack in early November 2014, when an animal rights group took down our main website and user forums, and in January 2016 another cyber attack caused us to take down our user forums for nearly a week.  In October 2013, we were also the victim of a “CryptoLocker” ransomware attack that temporarily prevented our access to sensitive company files.  Although these incidents did not result in a material loss of revenue, any future incidents, particularly of longer duration, could damage our brand and reputation and result in a material loss of revenue.  Maintaining an international presence in China and elsewhere, we may place ourselves at increased risk of cyber attacks, such as the denial of service attacks that affected Sony Pictures in the fourth quarter of 2014.  In addition, as highlighted by recent reports that ISIS terrorists may have used Sony’s PlayStation 4 network to plan attacks, the chat and other social features in our games could potentially be used by terrorist organizations or other criminals to communicate or for other nefarious purposes, which could severely damage our brand and reputation.  If an actual or perceived security breach occurs, the market perception of the effectiveness of our security measures could be harmed, we could lose players and advertisers, and we could suffer significant legal and financial harm due to such events or in connection with remediation efforts, investigation costs or penalties, changed security and system protection measures. Any of these actions could have a material and adverse effect on our business, reputation and operating results.

If we fail to maintain and enhance our capabilities for porting games to a broad array of mobile devices, particularly those running the Android operating system, our revenue and financial results could suffer. 

We derive the majority of our revenue from the sale of virtual goods within our games for smartphones and tablets that run Apple’s iOS or Google’s Android operating system.  Unlike the Apple ecosystem in which Apple controls both the device (iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad) and the storefront (Apple’s App Store), the Android ecosystem is highly fragmented since a large number of OEMs manufacture and sell Android-based devices that run a variety of versions of the Android operating system, and there are many Android-based storefronts in addition to the Google Play Store.  For us to sell our games to the widest possible audience of Android users, we must port our games to a significant portion of the more than 1,000 Android-based devices that are commercially available, many of which have different technical requirements.  Since the number of Android-based smartphones and tablets shipped worldwide is growing significantly, with more than one billion Android based devices sold worldwide in 2014, it is important that we maintain and enhance our porting capabilities, which could require us to invest considerable resources in this area.  These additional costs could harm our business, operating results and financial condition.  In addition, we must continue to increase the efficiency of our porting processes or it may take us longer to port games to an equivalent number of devices, which would negatively impact our margins.  If we fail to maintain or enhance our porting capabilities, our revenue and financial results could suffer.

We use a game development engine licensed from Unity Technologies to create many of our games. If we experience any prolonged technical issues with this engine or if we lose access to this engine for any reason, it could delay our game development efforts and cause our financial results to fall below expectations for a quarterly or annual period, which would likely cause our stock price to decline.

We use a game development engine licensed from Unity Technologies to create many of our games, and we expect to continue to use this engine for the foreseeable future.  Because we do not own this engine, we do not control its operation or maintenance nor do we control how the engine is updated or upgraded.  As a result, any prolonged technical issues with this engine might not be resolved quickly, despite the fact that we have contractual service level commitments from Unity.  In addition, to the extent that we require any functionality that is not offered by Unity, as was the case when Apple initially announced its 64-bit requirement, we are dependent on Unity to update or upgrade its engine to offer such functionality.  Furthermore, although Unity cannot terminate our agreement absent an uncured material breach of the agreement by us, we could lose access to this engine under certain circumstances, such as a natural disaster that impacts Unity or a bankruptcy event.  If we experience any prolonged issues with the operation of the Unity game development engine, if the Unity game development engine does not offer the functionality we require or if we lose access to this engine for any reason, it could delay our game development efforts and cause us to not meet revenue expectations for a quarterly or annual period, which would likely cause our stock price to decline.  For example, in the first quarter of 2016,

we were unable to implement a significant update to our Racing Rivals title due to programming bugs in the Unity game development engine, which update we believe could have helped to increase revenues for that title during the quarter.  Further, if one of our competitors acquired Unity, the acquiring company would be less likely to renew our agreement, which could impact our game development efforts in the future, particularly with respect to sequels to games that were created on the Unity engine.

We derive a significant portion of our revenue from advertisements and offers that are incorporated into our free-to-play games through relationships with third parties. If we lose the ability to provide these advertisements and offers for any reason, or if any events occur that negatively impact the revenue we receive from these sources, it would negatively impact our operating results.

We derive revenue from our free-to-play games through in-app purchases, advertisements and offers.  We incorporate advertisements and offers into our games by implementing third parties’ software development kits.  We rely on these third parties to provide us with a sufficient inventory of advertisements and offers to meet the demand of our user base.  If we exhaust the available inventory of these third parties, it will negatively impact our revenue.  If our relationship with any of these third parties terminates for any reason, or if the commercial terms of our relationships do not continue to be renewed on favorable terms, we would need to locate and implement other third-party solutions, which could negatively impact our revenue, at least in the short term.  Furthermore, the revenue that we derive from advertisements and offers is subject to seasonality, as companies’ advertising budgets are generally highest during the fourth quarter and decline significantly in the first quarter of the following year, which negatively impacts our revenue in the first quarter (and conversely significantly increases our marketing expenses in the fourth quarter).

In addition, the actions of the storefront operators can also negatively impact the revenue that we generate from advertisements and offers.  For example, in the second quarter of 2011, Apple began prohibiting virtual currency-incented advertising offers in games that directed users to download other applications from the Apple App Store in order to complete the offer.  These offers accounted for approximately one-third of our revenue during the three months ended September 30, 2011, and our inability to use such offers has negatively impacted our revenue.  In addition, during the second quarter of 2014, there were reports that Apple was considering prohibiting certain types of virtual currency-incented video advertising in games that promoted other applications available on the Apple App Store.  These incented video advertisements generate a meaningful percentage of our overall revenue, and any prohibition of these advertisements would have had a negative impact on our revenue.  Any similar changes in the future that impact our revenue that we generate from advertisements and offers could materially harm our business.

We may not, or may be unable to, renew our existing celebrity, brand and other content licenses when they expire and may not choose to obtain additional licenses or be able to obtain new licenses on favorable terms, which could negatively impact our revenue if we fail to replace such revenue with revenue from games based on our own intellectual property.

Although we generated 93.3% of our revenue from games based on our own intellectual property during 2013, that percentage declined to 62.7% in 2014 and 42.1% in 2015, largely due to the success of Kim Kardashian: Hollywood and, to a lesser extent, Racing Rivals, Robocop:  The Official Game, Tap Sports Baseball and Tap Sports Baseball 2015. We expect our revenue derived from games based on or substantially incorporating third-party intellectual property to increase further in 2016, as we expect to continue to derive significant revenue from Kim Kardashian: Hollywood and Racing Rivals and as all of the titles we plan to release in 2016 will feature or otherwise leverage celebrities or other third-party licensed brands, properties or other content, including our successful Kendall and Kylie title.  Certain of our licenses expire at various times during the next several years, and we may be unable to renew these licenses on terms favorable to us or at all, and we may have difficulties obtaining licenses from new celebrities on terms acceptable to us, if at all.  In addition, these licensors could decide to license to our competitors or develop and publish their own mobile games, competing with us in the marketplace.  Failure to maintain or renew our existing licenses or to obtain additional licenses would prevent us from continuing to offer our current licensed games and introducing new mobile games based on such licensed content, which could harm our business, operating results and financial condition.

Securing license agreements to develop, publish and market games based on or significantly incorporating celebrities, third-party licensed brands, properties, and other content typically requires that we make minimum guaranteed royalty and other payments to such licensors, and to the extent such payments become impaired, our operating results would be harmed.

In connection with recently announced partnerships and other potential partnerships with celebrities and other licensors of third-party brands, properties and content, we have incurred and expect to continue to incur significant minimum guaranteed royalty and other payments.  As a result, we may incur increased levels of impairments on such payments if our forecasts for these games are lower than we anticipated at the time we entered into the agreements.  For example, in 2013, 2014, and 2015 we impaired $435,000, $257,000, and $2.5 million respectively, related to contractual minimum guarantee and other payments.  The increase in 2015 is primarily related to impairment of minimum guaranteed royalty payments and warrants issued in connection with our James Bond: World of Espionage title.  In 2016, we expect that all of the games we release will be based on or otherwise incorporate celebrities and other third-party licensed brands, properties and other content as opposed to our original intellectual property games where we do not incur licensing fees and expenses, and as a result, our impairments on prepaid royalty guarantees and other licensing expenses may continue to rise.

We publish games developed by third parties, which exposes us to a number of potential operational and legal risks.  

Publishing games developed by third parties exposes us to a number of potential operational and legal risks.  For example, we may be required to provide third party developers with upfront license fees or non-recoupable minimum guaranteed royalties in order to obtain the rights to publish their games, and we may incur significant costs marketing these games after they have been commercially launched.  For example, we agreed to pay a significant license fee and minimum guaranteed royalty payment to an affiliate of Tencent Holdings Limited, or Tencent, to license and publish Tencent’s WeFire game in the United States and international markets outside of Asia.  Third-party games that we license and publish may not be commercially successful, particularly if they fail to appeal to Western audiences.  We and other mobile gaming companies have failed in the past to achieve commercial success in bringing successful games developed and launched in Asia to Western markets , and we may similarly fail to achieve commercial success with respect to our efforts relating to publishing WeFire.  In addition, if any of the games created by third party developers with which we work infringe intellectual property owned by others, or otherwise violate any third party’s rights or any applicable laws and regulations, such as laws with respect to data collection and privacy, we would be exposed to potential legal risks by publishing these games.  

Our business and growth may suffer if we are unable to hire and retain key personnel.

Our future success will depend, to a significant extent, on our ability to retain and motivate our key personnel, namely our management team, particularly Niccolo de Masi, our President and Chief Executive Officer, as well as experienced game development personnel.  In addition, to grow our business, execute on our business strategy and replace departing employees, we must identify, hire and retain qualified personnel, particularly additional game development teams to support our new product launches and monetization, live operations, server technology, user experience and product management personnel to support our continued transition to becoming a GaaS company and building the premier celebrity gaming platform.  The gaming and technology industries are also traditionally male dominated, so it may be difficult for us to recruit and retain talented female personnel who may be needed to help us optimize our games that are targeted to a more female-focused audience, including much of our celebrity gaming platform.  Recent stock price declines and our failure to attain most executive and employee performance-based bonus targets for 2015 may also make it more difficult for us to attract and retain top talent.  Competition for qualified management, game development and other staff is intense, particularly in the San Francisco Bay Area where we are headquartered.  In addition, attracting and retaining qualified personnel may be particularly difficult for us if our stock price continues to decline or remains at current levels, since individuals may elect to seek employment with other companies that they believe have better long-term prospects or that present better opportunities for earning equity-based compensation.  Competitors have in the past and may in the future attempt to recruit our employees, and our management and key employees are not bound by agreements that could prevent them from terminating their employment at any time.  As we continue to develop expertise in free-to-play mobile gaming, operating a GaaS company, monetization and developing social and community features in particular, our competitors may increasingly seek to recruit our employees, particularly from our development studios.  In addition, we do not maintain a key-person life insurance policy on any of our officers.  Our business and growth may suffer if we are unable to hire and retain key personnel.

Any restructuring actions and cost reduction initiatives that we undertake may not deliver the results we expect, and these actions may adversely affect our business.

We have implemented a number of restructurings during the last several years in which we implemented certain restructuring actions and cost reduction initiatives to streamline operations and improve cost efficiencies.  Our most recent restructurings included reductions in personnel supporting our studios in Beijing, China, Bellevue, Washington, and Long Beach, California.  We plan to continue to manage costs to better and more efficiently manage our business.  This most recent restructuring plan and other such efforts could result in disruptions to our operations and adversely affect our business.  In addition, we cannot be sure that the cost reduction and streamlining initiatives will be as successful in reducing our overall expenses as we expect or that additional costs will not offset any such reductions or streamlining.  If our operating costs are higher than we expect or if we do not maintain adequate control of our costs and expenses, our operating results will suffer.

We may not realize the benefits expected through our strategic relationship with Tencent and other aspects of the relationship could have adverse effects on our business.

In April 2015, we entered into a strategic relationship with Tencent Holdings Limited, or Tencent, a leading Internet company in China and arguably the world’s largest gaming company.  Tencent, through a controlled affiliate, agreed to invest $126.0 million in exchange for approximately 16.3% of our total outstanding common stock on a post-transaction basis.  In November 2015, we entered into an agreement with Tencent to license and publish its game, WeFire, in the United States and international markets outside of Asia.  Our agreement to publish WeFire may not be successful, particularly given the license fees and royalties we will be required to pay under the agreement.  In addition, we may not succeed in entering into any other agreements or operating partnerships with Tencent in the future.  Even if we do enter into additional operational partnerships, it could take months to years to fully realize the benefits of such partnerships and, to the extent such agreements involve publishing our games in China, some of our platform partners in China and other parts of Asia may view such a partnership negatively, and in fact, some partners in China may already view the fact that Tencent is a significant investor in us negatively, and we may find it more difficult to obtain featuring of our games from such partners in China going forward. 

Tencent, through its controlled affiliates, held approximately 21.5% of the aggregate voting power of our common stock as of February 29, 2016, and could acquire up to 25.0% of the voting power through open-market purchases of our common stock.  While Tencent has agreed to cause these shares to be voted with the majority recommendation of the independent members of our board of directors on most matters, Tencent could have considerable influence over matters such as approving a potential acquisition of us.  Tencent was also granted the right to designate a member of our board of directors, initially appointing Tencent Senior Vice President, Steven Ma, and Mr. Ma or any future Tencent designee could have an actual or apparent conflict of interest in such matters.  Tencent’s investment in and position with us could also discourage others from pursuing any potential acquisition of us, which could have the effect of depriving the holders of our common stock of the opportunity to sell their shares at a premium over the prevailing market price.

Our reported financial results could be adversely affected by changes in financial accounting standards or by the application of existing or future accounting standards to our business as it evolves.

Our reported financial results are impacted by the accounting policies promulgated by the SEC and accounting standards bodies and the methods, estimates and judgments that we use in applying our accounting policies.  Due to recent economic events, the frequency of accounting policy changes may accelerate, including conversion to unified international accounting standards.  Policies affecting revenue recognition have affected, and could further significantly affect, the way we account for revenue.  For example, the accounting for revenue derived from smartphone platforms and free-to-play games, particularly with regard to revenue generated from online digital storefronts, is still evolving and, in some cases, uncertain.  In particular, we were required to file an amendment to our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2012 and our Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2013 to restate or revise the financial statements contained in those reports (including for the year ended December 31, 2011) because we did not correctly apply the applicable revenue recognition accounting guidance relating to our smartphone revenue.  While we believe that we are now correctly accounting for our smartphone revenue, this is an area that continues to involve significant discussion among accounting professionals and which is not completely settled.  It is possible that the relative application, interpretation and weighting of the factors that relate to whether we should be considered the principal in the sales transaction of games sold through digital storefronts may evolve, and we may in the future conclude that our new accounting policy for smartphone revenue, as reflected in the restated financial statements, is incorrect, which could result in another restatement of affected financial statements.  In addition, we currently defer revenue related to virtual goods and currency over the average playing period of paying users, which approximates the estimated weighted average useful life of the transaction.  While we believe our estimates are reasonable based on available game player information, we may revise such estimates in the future as our games’ operation periods change.  Any adjustments arising from changes in the estimates of the lives of these virtual items would be applied to the current quarter and prospectively on the basis that such changes are caused by new information indicating a change in the game player behavior patterns of our paying users.  Any changes in our estimates of useful lives of these virtual items may result in our revenue being recognized on a basis different from prior periods’ and may cause our operating results to fluctuate.  As we enhance, expand and diversify our business and product offerings, the application of existing or future financial accounting standards, particularly those relating to the way we account for our smartphone revenue, could have a significant adverse effect on our reported results although not necessarily on our cash flows.

If we are unable to maintain effective internal control over financial reporting, the accuracy and timeliness of our financial reporting may be adversely affected.

Maintaining effective internal control over financial reporting is necessary for us to produce reliable financial statements.  In connection with the restatement of our financial statements in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2012 and our Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2013, management, including our Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer, reassessed the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting as of December 31, 2012.  Based on this reassessment using the guidelines established in Internal Control — Integrated Framework issued by the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO) in 1992, management had concluded that we did not maintain effective internal control over financial reporting as of December 31, 2012 because of a material weakness related to the application of revenue accounting guidance to our smartphone revenue for sales through digital storefronts.  This control deficiency resulted in the misstatement of our revenue and cost of revenue, including gross margin percentages, and the related balance sheet

accounts and financial disclosures for the years ended December 31, 2011 and 2012 (and the restatement of unaudited interim condensed consolidated financial statements for the quarters ended March 31, June 30, and September 30 for such years).  Although we have remediated this material weakness, if we are otherwise unable to maintain adequate internal controls for financial reporting, or if our independent registered public accounting firm is unable to express an opinion as to the effectiveness of our internal controls as required pursuant to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, it could result in another material misstatement of our financial statements that would require a restatement, investor confidence in the accuracy and timeliness of our financial reports may be impacted or the market price of our common stock could be negatively impacted.

Our business will suffer if our acquisition and strategic investment activities are unsuccessful or disrupt our ongoing business, which may involve increased expenses and may present risks not contemplated at the time of the transactions.

We have acquired and invested in, and may continue to acquire and invest in, companies, products and technologies that complement our strategic direction.  Acquisitions and investments involve significant risks and uncertainties, including:

 

 

In addition, if we issue equity securities as consideration in an acquisition or strategic investment, as we did for our acquisitions of Griptonite, Inc., Blammo Games Inc., GameSpy Industries, Inc., PlayFirst, Inc. and Cie Games, Inc., our current stockholders’ percentage ownership and earnings per share would be diluted.  Because acquisitions and strategic investments are inherently risky, our transactions may not be successful and may, in some cases, harm our operating results or financial condition. 

Changes in foreign exchange rates and limitations on the convertibility of foreign currencies could adversely affect our business and operating results.

We currently transact business in more than 100 countries and in dozens of different currencies, with Pounds Sterling, Euros and Chinese Renminbi being the primary international currencies in which we transact business.  Conducting business in currencies other than U.S. Dollars subjects us to fluctuations in currency exchange rates that could have a negative impact on our reported operating results.  We experienced significant fluctuations in currency exchange rates in 2013, 2014, and 2015, and expect to experience continued significant fluctuations in the future.  We incur expenses for employee compensation and other operating expenses at our non-U.S. locations in the local currency, and an increasing percentage of our international revenue is from customers who pay us in currencies other than the U.S. Dollar.  Fluctuations in the exchange rates between the U.S. Dollar and those other currencies could result in the U.S. Dollar equivalent of these expenses being higher and/or the U.S. Dollar equivalent of the foreign-denominated revenue being lower than would be the case if exchange rates were stable.  This could negatively impact our operating results. Conversely, the current economic crisis in Russia has led to a significant devaluation of the Ruble compared to the U.S. Dollar, which has reduced the effective salaries of our employees in our Moscow studio.  As a result, we may be at risk of losing key employees to competitors who are willing to offer higher effective wages. To date, we have not engaged in exchange rate hedging activities, and we do not expect to do so in the foreseeable future.

We face additional risk if a currency is not freely or actively traded.  Some currencies, such as the Chinese Renminbi in which our Chinese operations principally transact business, are subject to limitations on conversion into other currencies, which can limit our ability to react to rapid foreign currency devaluations and to repatriate funds to the United States should we require additional working capital.

We face added business, political, regulatory, operational, financial and economic risks as a result of our international operations and distribution, any of which could increase our costs and adversely affect our operating results.

International sales represented approximately 31.3% and 40.6% and 53.9% of our revenue during 2015, 2014, and 2013, respectively.  To target international markets, we develop games that are customized for consumers in those markets.  We have international offices located in a number of foreign countries including Canada, China, India, Japan, Korea and Russia.  We expect to increase our international presence (including to the extent we elect to exercise our call option to acquire Icelandic game developer, Plain Vanilla Corp.), and we expect international sales will continue to be an important component of our revenue, particularly in APAC markets.  Risks affecting our international operations include:

These risks could harm our international operations, which, in turn, could materially and adversely affect our business, operating results and financial condition.  In particular, we have over 100 employees located at our development studio in Moscow, Russia.  The current economic crisis in Russia, including the destabilization of the Ruble, could lead to unstable political conditions, civil unrest or other developments that could materially affect our business, including through distractions and potential hardships to our Russian employees, restrictions on our ability to fund our Russian operations, and other difficulties that could cause delays to our game launches or even the cancellation of a game release and otherwise affect our ability to update and maintain games previously released from our Moscow studio. 

If we fail to deliver our games at the same time as new mobile devices are commercially introduced, our revenue may suffer.

Our business depends, in part, on the commercial introduction of new mobile devices with enhanced features, including larger, higher resolution color screens, improved audio quality, and greater processing power, memory, battery life and storage.  For example, the introduction of new and more powerful versions of Apple’s iPhone and iPad and devices based on Google’s Android operating system, have helped drive the growth of the mobile games market.  In addition, consumers generally purchase the majority of content, such as our games, for a new device within a few months of purchasing it.  We do not control the timing of these device launches.  The mobile games market could also be disrupted by new technologies, such as the introduction of next generation virtual reality devices.  Some manufacturers give us access to their new devices prior to commercial release.  If one or more major manufacturers were to stop providing us access to new device models prior to commercial release, we might be unable to introduce games that are compatible with the new device when the device is first commercially released, and we might be unable to make compatible games for a substantial period following the device release.  If we do not adequately build into our title plan the demand for games for a particular mobile device or experience game launch delays, we miss the opportunity to sell games when new mobile devices are shipped or our end users upgrade to a new mobile device, our revenue would likely decline and our business, operating results and financial condition would likely suffer.

If the use of smartphones and tablet devices as game platforms and the proliferation of mobile devices generally do not increase, our business could be adversely affected.

While the number of people using mobile Internet-enabled devices, such as smartphones and tablet devices, has increased dramatically in the past few years, the mobile market, particularly the market for mobile games, is still emerging, and it may not grow as we anticipate.  Our future success is substantially dependent upon the continued growth of use of mobile devices for games, as opposed to social media applications or other uses.  The proliferation of mobile devices may not continue to develop at historical rates and consumers may not continue to use mobile Internet-enabled devices as platforms for games.  In addition, new and emerging technologies could make the mobile devices on which our games are currently released obsolete, requiring us to transition our business model to develop games for other next-generation platforms. 

Our business is subject to increasing governmental regulation. If we do not successfully respond to these regulations, our business may suffer.

We are subject to a number of domestic and foreign laws and regulations that affect our business.  Not only are these laws constantly evolving, which could result in their being interpreted in ways that could harm our business, but legislation is also continually being introduced that may affect both the content of our products and their distribution.  In the United States, for example, numerous federal and state laws have been introduced which attempt to restrict the content or distribution of games.  Legislation has been adopted in several states, and proposed at the federal level, that prohibits the sale of certain games to minors.  If such legislation is adopted, it could harm our business by limiting the games we are able to offer to our customers or by limiting the size of the potential market for our games.  We may also be required to modify certain games or alter our marketing strategies to comply with new and possibly inconsistent regulations, which could be costly or delay the release of our games.  For example, the United Kingdom’s Office of Fair Trading issued new principles in January 2014 relating to in-app purchases in free-to-play games that are directed towards children 16 and under, which principles became effective in April 2014.  In addition, in response to a request made by the European Commission, Google no longer labels free-to-play games as free in European Union countries.  Similarly, in the fourth quarter of 2014, Apple changed its label for free-to-download applications from “FREE” to “GET” in the Apple App Store.  The Federal Trade Commission has also indicated that it intends to review issues related to in-app purchases, particularly with respect to games that are marketed primarily to minors; the Federal Trade Commission recently reached settlement agreements with Apple and Google on this subject.  If the Federal Trade Commission issues rules significantly restricting or even prohibiting in-app purchases, it would significantly impact our business strategy.  In addition, two self-regulatory bodies in the United States (the Entertainment Software Rating Board) and in the European Union (Pan European Game Information (PEGI)) provide consumers with rating information on various products such as entertainment software similar to our products based on the content (for example, violence, sexually explicit content, language).  Furthermore, the Chinese government has adopted measures designed to eliminate violent or obscene content in games.  In response to these measures, some Chinese telecommunications operators have suspended billing their customers for certain mobile gaming platform services, including those services that do not contain offensive or unauthorized content, which could negatively impact our revenue in China.  Any one or more of these factors could harm our business by limiting the products we are able to offer to our customers, by limiting the size of the potential market for our products, or by requiring costly additional differentiation between products for different territories to address varying regulations.

Furthermore, the growth and development of free-to-play gaming and the sale of virtual goods may prompt calls for more stringent consumer protection laws that may impose additional burdens on companies such as ours.  We anticipate that scrutiny and regulation of our industry will increase and that we will be required to devote legal and other resources to addressing such regulation.  For example, existing laws or new laws regarding the regulation of currency and banking institutions may be interpreted to cover virtual currency or goods.  If that were to occur we may be required to seek licenses, authorizations or approvals from relevant regulators, the granting of which may depend on us meeting certain capital and other requirements and we may be subject to additional regulation and oversight, all of which could significantly increase our operating costs.  Changes in current laws or regulations or the imposition of new laws and regulations in the United States or elsewhere regarding these activities may dampen the growth of free-to-play gaming and impair our business.

We sometimes offer our players various types of sweepstakes, giveaways and promotional opportunities, and launched a version of our Frontline Commando: D-Day game utilizing the Skillz technology platform that allows players to compete against each other in tournaments for cash prizes.  We have also in the past through a partnership with Probability PLC offered a suite of Glu branded mobile slots games in the United Kingdom and might continue to explore opportunities with respect to real money gambling.  We are subject to laws in a number of jurisdictions concerning the operation and offering of such activities and games, many of which are still evolving and could be interpreted in ways that could harm our business.  Any court ruling or other governmental action that imposes liability on providers of online services could result in criminal or civil liability and could harm our business.

In addition, because our services are available worldwide, certain foreign jurisdictions and others may claim that we are required to comply with their laws, including in jurisdictions where we have no local entity, employees or infrastructure.

The laws and regulations concerning data privacy and data security are continually evolving, and our actual or perceived failure to comply with these laws and regulations could harm our business.

We are subject to federal, state and foreign laws regarding privacy and the protection of the information that we collect regarding our users, which laws are currently in a state of flux and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future.  The U.S. government, including the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Commerce, is continuing to review the need for greater regulation over collecting information concerning consumer behavior on the Internet and on mobile devices.  For example, in December 2012, the Federal Trade Commission adopted amendments to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act to strengthen privacy protections for children under age 13, which amendments became effective in July 2013.  In addition, the European Union has proposed reforms to its existing data protection legal framework.  In addition, in October 2015, the Court of Justice of the European Union issued a ruling striking down the longstanding Safe Harbor agreement between the United States and the European Union, which raises uncertainty regarding the ability of companies to transfer the personal data of European citizens to the United States.  Various government and consumer agencies have also called for new regulation and changes in industry practices.  For example, in February 2012, the California Attorney General announced a deal with Amazon, Apple, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft and Research in Motion to strengthen privacy protection for users that download third-party apps to smartphones and tablet devices.  Additionally, in January 2014, the Federal Trade Commission announced a settlement with Apple related to in-app purchases made by minors.  In response to developments in the interpretation and understanding of regulations such as these and guidance and inquiries from the California Attorney General, we released updates to our My Dragon and Deer Hunter Reloaded games and made changes to our games in development to make our privacy policy readily accessible to players of these games as required by the California Online Privacy Protection Act.  If we do not follow existing laws and regulations, as well as the rules of the smartphone platform operators, with respect to privacy-related matters, or if consumers raise any concerns about our privacy practices, even if unfounded, it could damage our reputation and operating results.

All of our games are subject to our privacy policy and our terms of service located on our corporate website.  If we fail to comply with our posted privacy policy, terms of service or privacy-related laws and regulations, including with respect to the information we collect from users of our games, it could result in proceedings against us by governmental authorities or others, which could harm our business.  In addition, interpreting and applying data protection laws to the mobile gaming industry is often unclear.  These laws may be interpreted and applied in conflicting ways from state to state, country to country, or region to region, and in a manner that is not consistent with our current data protection practices.  Complying with these varying requirements could cause us to incur additional costs and change our business practices.  Further, if we fail to adequately protect our users’ privacy and data, it could result in a loss of player confidence in our services and ultimately in a loss of users, which could adversely affect our business.

In the area of information security and data protection, many states have passed laws requiring notification to users when there is a security breach for personal data, such as the 2002 amendment to California’s Information Practices Act, or requiring the adoption of minimum information security standards that are often vaguely defined and difficult to implement.  Costs to comply with these laws may increase as a result of changes in interpretation.  Furthermore, any failure on our part to comply with these laws may subject us to significant liabilities.  The security measures we have in place to protect our data and the personal information of our employees, customers and partners could be breached due to

cyber-attacks initiated by third party hackers, employee error or malfeasance, or otherwise.  Because the techniques used to obtain unauthorized access, disable or degrade service or sabotage systems change frequently and often are not recognized until launched against a target, we may be unable to anticipate these techniques or to implement adequate preventative measures.  Any breach or unauthorized access could materially interfere with our operations or our ability to offer our services or result in significant legal and financial exposure, damage to our reputation and a loss of confidence in the security of our data, which could have an adverse effect on our business and operating results.

Our stock price has fluctuated and declined significantly since our initial public offering in March 2007, and may continue to fluctuate, may not rise and may decline further.  

The trading price of our common stock has fluctuated in the past and is expected to continue to fluctuate in the future, as a result of a number of factors, many of which are outside our control, such as changes in the operating performance and stock market valuations of other technology companies generally, or those in our industry in particular, such as Electronic Arts and Zynga.  We also experience stock price volatility as investors monitor the performance of our games through third-party tools, such as App Annie, the Apple App Store’s “Top Grossing” rankings and other measurements of the performance of our games. 

In addition, The NASDAQ Global Market on which our common stock is listed has recently and in the past experienced extreme price and volume fluctuations that have affected the market prices of many companies, some of which appear to be unrelated or disproportionate to their operating performance.  These broad market fluctuations could adversely affect the market price of our common stock.  In the past, following periods of volatility in the market price of a particular company’s securities, securities class action litigation has often been brought against that company.  Securities class action litigation against us could result in substantial costs and divert our management’s attention and resources.

If we do not adequately protect our intellectual property rights, it may be possible for third parties to obtain and improperly use our intellectual property and our business and operating results may be harmed.

 

Our intellectual property is essential to our business.  We rely on a combination of patent, copyright, trademark, trade secret and other intellectual property laws and contractual restrictions on disclosure to protect our intellectual property rights.  To date, we have only one issued U.S. patent (including a corresponding Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) international patent) and only eight U.S. patent applications currently outstanding, including two that we inherited through acquisitions (and we have four corresponding PCT international patent applications), so we will not be able to protect the vast majority of our technologies from independent invention by third parties.  In addition, we have filed foreign patent applications on four of our eight U.S. patent applications, and an additional foregin patent application for our one U.S. patent.  Despite our efforts to protect our intellectual property rights, unauthorized parties may attempt to copy or otherwise to obtain and use our technology and games, and some parties have distributed “jail broken” versions of our games where all of the content has been unlocked and made available for free.  Further, some of our competitors have released games that are nearly identical to successful games released by their competitors in an effort to confuse the market and divert users from the competitor’s game to the copycat game.  We believe that these tactics were employed by Hothead Games in their game Kill Shot, which we believed infringed certain Glu copyrights and trade dress contained in our Deer Hunter 2014 game.  We initiated litigation against Hothead Games in November 2014, and we entered into a settlement agreement with Hothead in August 2015 in which Hothead agreed to make payments to us, including ongoing payments, and we agreed to allow Hothead to continue to publish the Kill Shot game.  To the extent competitors continue to copy our games, it could reduce the amount of revenue we are able to generate from any infringed games.  Monitoring unauthorized use of our games is difficult and costly, and we cannot be certain that the steps we have taken will prevent piracy and other unauthorized distribution and use of our technology and games, particularly in certain international jurisdictions, such as China, where the laws may not protect our intellectual property rights as fully as in the United States.  In the future, we may institute additional litigation to enforce our intellectual property rights, which could result in substantial costs and divert our management’s attention and our resources.

 

In addition, although we require our third party developers to sign agreements not to disclose or improperly use our trade secrets, to acknowledge that all inventions, trade secrets, works of authorship, developments and other processes generated by them on our behalf are our property and to assign to us any ownership they may have in those works, it may

still be possible for third parties to obtain and improperly use our intellectual properties without our consent.  This could harm our brand, business, operating results and financial condition.

We may become involved in intellectual property disputes, which may disrupt our business and require us to pay significant damage awards.

Third parties may sue us for intellectual property infringement, or initiate proceedings to invalidate our intellectual property, which, if successful, could disrupt our business, cause us to pay significant damage awards or require us to pay licensing fees.  For example, on August 20, 2014, Inventor Holdings, LLC, a Delaware limited liability company, filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware alleging that we were infringing one of its patents and seeking unspecified damages, including interest, costs, expenses and an accounting of all infringing acts, attorneys’ fees and such other costs as the Court deems just and proper.  In September 2015, the Court granted our motion to dismiss the case brought by Inventor Holdings.  In addition, in November 2014, Telinit Technologies, LLC, a Texas company, filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division, alleging that we were infringing one of its patents and seeking unspecified damages, attorneys’ fees and costs.  We settled the dispute with Telinit for an immaterial amount in January 2015.  Finally, in November 2015, Just Games Interactive LLC (d/b/a Kung Fu Factory, f/k/a Tiny Fun Studios) (“Just  Games”) filed a complaint against us and Kristen Jenner (f/k/a Kris Kardashian) in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.  The complaint alleged direct copyright infringement against us and seeking at least $10.0 million in damages as well as other relief, including costs, permanent and temporary injunctive relief, an accounting of profits, a constructive trust and such other costs the Court deemed just and proper.  We filed a motion to dismiss the complaint on January 27, 2016.  On February 1, 2016, Just Games filed a voluntary motion to dismiss their case against us without prejudice. Despite our prior successes in defending against such claims, claims against us in the future could result in our being enjoined from using our intellectual property or licensed intellectual property, and we might incur significant licensing fees and could be forced to develop alternative technologies.  We may also be required to pay penalties, judgments, royalties or significant settlement costs.  If we fail or are unable to develop non-infringing technology or games or to license the infringed or similar technology or games on a timely basis, we may be forced to withdraw games from the market or be prevented from introducing new games.  We might also incur substantial expenses in defending against third-party claims, regardless of their merit.

In addition, we use open source software in some of our games and expect to continue to use open source software in the future.  We may face claims from companies that incorporate open source software into their products, claiming ownership of, or demanding release of, the source code, the open source software and/or derivative works that were developed using such software, or otherwise seeking to enforce the terms of the applicable open source license.  These claims could also result in litigation, require us to purchase a costly license or require us to devote additional research and development resources to change our games, any of which would have a negative effect on our business and operating results.

 

We may become a party to litigation and regulatory inquiries, which could result in an unfavorable outcome and have an adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operation and cash flows.

 

We may become subject to various legal proceedings, claims and regulatory inquiries that arise out of the ordinary conduct of our business and are not yet resolved and additional claims and inquiries may arise in the future.  In addition, events may occur that give rise to a potential risk of litigation.  The number and significance of regulatory inquiries have increased as our business has grown and evolved.  Any proceedings, claims or inquiries initiated by or against us, whether successful or not, may be time consuming; result in costly litigation, damage awards, consent decrees, injunctive relief or increased costs of doing business, require us to change our business practices or products, require significant amounts of management time, result in diversion of significant operations resources or otherwise harm our business and future financial results.

 

“Cheating” programs, scam offers, black-markets and other offerings or actions by unrelated third parties that seek to exploit our games and players affect the game-playing experience and may lead players to stop playing our games or divert revenue to unrelated third parties.  

Unrelated third parties have developed, and may continue to develop, “cheating” programs, scam offers, black-markets and other offerings that may decrease our revenue generated from our virtual economies, divert our players from our games or otherwise harm us.  Cheating programs enable players to exploit vulnerabilities in our games to obtain virtual currency or other items that would otherwise generate in-app purchases for us, play the games in automated ways or obtain unfair advantages over other players who do play fairly.  Unrelated third parties attempt to scam our players with fake offers for virtual goods or other game benefits.  We devote resources to discover and disable these programs and activities, but if we are unable to do so in a prompt and timely manner, our operations may be disrupted, our reputation damaged and players may play our games less frequently or stop playing our games altogether.  This may lead to lost revenue from paying players, increased cost of developing technological measures to combat these programs and activities, legal claims relating to the diminution in value of our virtual currency and goods, and increased customer service costs needed to respond to disgruntled players.

Unanticipated changes in our income tax rates or exposure to additional tax liabilities may affect our future financial results.  

Our future effective income tax rates may be favorably or unfavorably affected by unanticipated changes in the valuation of our deferred tax assets and liabilities, or by changes in tax laws or their interpretation. Determining our worldwide provision for income taxes requires significant judgments. The estimation process and applicable laws are inherently uncertain, and our estimates are not binding on tax authorities.  Our effective tax rate could also be adversely affected by a variety of factors, many of which are beyond our control.  Recent and contemplated changes to U.S. tax laws, including limitations on a taxpayer’s ability to claim and utilize foreign tax credits and defer certain tax deductions until earnings outside of the U.S. are repatriated to the U.S., could impact the tax treatment of our foreign earnings. Further, the taxing authorities of the jurisdictions in which we operate may challenge our methodologies for valuing developed technology or intercompany arrangements, including our transfer pricing, or determine that the manner in which we operate our business is not consistent with the manner in which we report our income to the jurisdictions, which could increase our worldwide effective tax rate and harm our financial position and results of operations. In addition, we are subject to the continuous examination of our income tax returns by the Internal Revenue Service and other tax authorities. We regularly assess the likelihood of adverse outcomes resulting from these examinations to determine if our provision for income taxes is adequate. These continuous examinations may result in unforeseen tax-related liabilities, which may harm our future financial results.

We must charge, collect and/or pay taxes other than income taxes, such as payroll, value-added, sales and use, net worth, property and goods and services taxes, in both the U.S. and foreign jurisdiction.  If tax authorities assert that we have taxable nexus in a jurisdiction, they may seek to impose past as well as future tax liability and/or penalties.  Any such impositions could also cause significant administrative burdens and decrease our future sales.  Moreover, state and federal legislatures have been considering various initiatives that could change our tax position regarding sales and use taxes.

 

Finally, as we change our international operations, adopt new products and new distribution models, implement changes to our operating structure or undertake intercompany transactions in light of changing tax laws, our tax expense could increase.

Our facilities are located near known earthquake fault zones, and the occurrence of an earthquake or other natural disaster could damage our facilities and equipment, which could require us to curtail or cease operations.

 

Our principal offices are located in the San Francisco Bay Area, an area known for earthquakes.  We are also vulnerable to damage from other types of disasters, including power loss, fires, explosions, floods, communications failures, terrorist attacks and similar events.  If any natural or other disaster were to occur, our ability to operate our

business could be impaired.

If securities or industry analysts do not publish research about our business, or publish negative or misinformed reports about our business, our share price and trading volume could decline and/or become more volatile.

 

The trading market for our common stock is affected by the research and reports that securities or industry analysts publish about our business.  We do not have any control over these analysts.  If one or more of the analysts who cover us downgrade our shares or lower their opinion of our shares, our share price would likely decline.  If one or more of these analysts cease coverage of our company or fail to regularly publish reports on us, we could lose visibility in the financial markets, which in turn could cause our share price or trading volume to decline.  In addition, our share price and the volatility of our shares can be affected by misinformed or mistaken research reports on our business.

Our common stock price may be affected by third-party data regarding our games.

Third parties publish daily data about us and other mobile gaming companies with respect to downloads of our games, daily and monthly active users and estimated revenue generated by our games.  These metrics can be volatile, particularly for specific games, and in many cases do not accurately reflect the actual levels of usage of our games across all platforms or the revenue generated by our games.  To the extent that securities analysts or investors base their views of our business or prospects on such third-party data, the price of our common stock may be affected by such third-party data and may not reflect the actual performance of our business.

Sales of substantial amounts of our common stock in the public markets, or the perception that such sales might occur, could reduce the price that our common stock might otherwise attain and may dilute your voting power and your ownership interest in us.  

The market price of shares of our common stock could decline as a result of substantial sales of our common stock, particularly sales by our directors and their affiliates, executive officers, employees and significant stockholders, under our current shelf registration statements, through a large number of shares of our common stock becoming available for sale, or the perception in the market that holders of a large number of shares intend to sell their shares.  For example, we issued 9,982,886 shares in connection with our acquisition of Cie Games, Inc. in August 2014.  We filed a Registration Statement on Form S-3 covering the resale of such shares.  Accordingly, the shares issued in the Cie Games acquisition are subject to only limited re-sale restrictions and sales of substantial amounts of such shares may occur.  Also, while Tencent is prohibited from selling the shares it acquired from us for 18-months from April 29, 2015, following expiration of such lock-up period, Tencent would be free to sell those shares on the open-market, subject only to our black-out periods and other limitations under our insider trading policy.

Some provisions in our certificate of incorporation and bylaws, as well as Delaware law, may deter third parties from seeking to acquire us.

Our certificate of incorporation and bylaws contain provisions that may make the acquisition of our company more difficult without the approval of our board of directors, including the following:

 

In addition, as a Delaware corporation, we are subject to provisions of Delaware law, including Section 203 of the Delaware General Corporation Law, which prevents certain stockholders holding more than 15% of our outstanding common stock from engaging in certain business combinations without approval of the holders of at least two-thirds of our outstanding common stock not held by such 15% or greater stockholder, although our board of directors waived this provision with respect to Tencent’s potential acquisition of greater than 15% of our shares in connection with the Offering.

 

Item 1B.  Unresolved Staff Comments

 

None.

 

Item 2.  Properties

 

We lease our San Francisco, California corporate headquarters, an office building of approximately 29,000 square feet. The San Francisco facility currently accommodates our principal executive, marketing, business development, human resources, finance, legal, information technology and administrative activities, one of our development studios, and other development activities.

We lease additional domestic office space in San Mateo and Long Beach, California; Portland, Oregon; and Bellevue, Washington. We lease offices for our foreign operations in: Toronto, Canada; Hyderabad, India; Moscow, Russia; Beijing, China; and Seoul, Korea. These additional domestic and international facilities primarily accommodate development studios, and customer care activities, and total approximately 117,600 square feet.

 

We believe our space is adequate for our current needs and that suitable additional or substitute space will be available to accommodate the foreseeable expansion of our operations.  See Note 7 of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements in Item 8 of this report for more information about our lease commitments.

 

Item 3.  Legal Proceedings

On August 19, 2014, Inventor Holdings, LLC (“IHL”), a Delaware limited liability company, filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware alleging that we are infringing one of its patents and seeking unspecified damages, including interest, costs, expenses and an accounting of all infringing acts, attorneys’ fees and such other costs as the Court deems just and proper.  On October 10, 2014, we filed a motion to dismiss the complaint with prejudice on the ground that the patent asserted by IHL claims patent-ineligible subject matter pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 101 and thus the complaint fails to state a claim upon which relief can be granted.  On October 27, 2014, IHL filed an opposition to our motion to dismiss the complaint with prejudice.  We filed our reply to IHL’s opposition on November 6, 2014.   On September 30, 2015, the Court granted our motion to dismiss IHL’s complaint.  On October 9, 2015, the parties entered a joint stipulation with the Court under which IHL agreed not to appeal the Court’s order to dismiss the case and each party agreed to bear its own fees and costs of the litigation.

On November 5, 2014, we filed a complaint against Hothead Games, Inc. (“Hothead”) in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California alleging that Hothead had willfully infringed certain of our copyrights and trade dress contained in our Deer Hunter 2014 game through Hothead’s release of its game, Kill Shot.  On August 3, 2015, we entered into a settlement agreement with Hothead resolving our claims against them.  Hothead agreed to make payments to us, including ongoing payments, and we agreed to allow Hothead to continue to publish the Kill Shot game.  We filed a dismissal of the case on August 17, 2015, which the Court granted on August 18, 2015.  

In November 2014, Telinit Technologies, LLC, a Texas company, filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division, alleging that we were infringing one of its patents and seeking unspecified damages, attorneys’ fees and costs.  We settled this dispute in January 2015 for an immaterial amount.

On November 4, 2015, Just Games Interactive LLC (d/b/a Kung Fu Factory, f/k/a Tiny Fun Studios) (“Just Games”) filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California against us, Kristen Jenner (f/k/a Kris Kardashian) and additional yet-to-be named defendants.  The complaint alleged direct copyright infringement against us and direct and contributory copyright infringement and breach of implied contract against the other defendants.  Just Games was seeking at least $10.0 million in damages as well as other relief, including costs, permanent and temporary injunctive relief, an accounting of profits, a constructive trust and such other costs the Court deemed just and proper.  We filed a motion to dismiss the complaint on January 27, 2016.  On February 1, 2016, Just Games filed a voluntary motion to dismiss their case against us without prejudice.   

From time to time, we are subject to various claims, complaints and legal actions in the normal course of business.  We are not currently party to any pending litigation, the outcome of which will have a material adverse effect on our operations, financial position or liquidity.  However, the ultimate outcome of any litigation is uncertain and, regardless of outcome, litigation can have an adverse impact on us because of defense costs, potential negative publicity, diversion of management resources and other factors.

 

Item 4.  Mine Safety Disclosures

 

Not applicable.

 

PART II

 

Item 5.  Market for Registrant’s Common Equity, Related Stockholder Matters and Issuer Purchases of Equity Securities

 

Market Information for Common Stock

 

Our common stock has been listed on The NASDAQ Global Market under the symbol “GLUU” since our initial public offering in March 2007.  The following table sets forth, for the periods indicated, the high and low intra-day prices for our common stock as reported on The NASDAQ Global Market.  The closing price of our common stock on February 29, 2016 was $3.71.

 

 

 

Our stock price has fluctuated and declined significantly since our initial public offering.  Please see the Risk Factor – “Our stock price has fluctuated and declined significantly since our initial public offering in March 2007, and may continue to fluctuate, may not rise and may decline further” – in Item 1A of this report.

 

Stock Price Performance Graph

 

The following graph shows a comparison from December 31, 2010 through December 31, 2015 of the cumulative total return for an investment of $100 (and the reinvestment of dividends) in our common stock, the NASDAQ Composite Index and the NASDAQ Telecommunications Index. Such returns are based on historical results and are not intended to suggest future performance.

 

 

The information under the heading “Stock Price Performance Graph” shall not be deemed “soliciting material” or to be “filed” for purposes of Section 18 of the Exchange Act of 1934, and shall not be incorporated by reference into any registration statement or other document filed by us with the SEC, whether made before or after the date of this report, regardless of any general incorporation language in such filing, except as expressly set forth by specific reference in such filing.

 

Stockholders

 

As of February 29, 2016, we had approximately 70 record holders of our common stock and thousands of additional beneficial holders.

 

Dividend Policy

 

We have never declared or paid any cash dividends on our capital stock.  We currently intend to retain any future earnings and do not expect to pay any dividends in the foreseeable future.  Any future determination related to our dividend policy will be made at the discretion of our Board of Directors.

 

Recent Sales of Unregistered Securities

 

None.

 

Purchases of Equity Securities by the Issuer and Affiliated Purchasers

 

None.

   

 

Item 6.  Selected Financial Data

 

The following selected consolidated financial data should be read in conjunction with Item 7, “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations,” Item 8, “Financial Statements and Supplementary Data,” and other financial data included elsewhere in this report. Our historical results of operations are not necessarily indicative of results of operations to be expected for any future period.

 

 

 

 

Please see Note 1, Note 3 and Note 7 of Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements for a discussion of factors such as business combinations and any material uncertainties that may materially affect the comparability of the information reflected in selected financial data, described in Item 6 of this report. 

 

Item 7.  Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations

 

You should read the following discussion of our financial condition and results of operations in conjunction with our consolidated financial statements and the related notes included in Item 8, “Financial Statements and Supplementary Data” of this report. In addition to our historical consolidated financial information, the following discussion contains forward-looking statements that reflect our plans, estimates, and beliefs. Our actual results could differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause or contribute to these differences include those discussed below and elsewhere in this report, particularly in Item 1A, “Risk Factors.”

 

Our Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations (“MD&A”) includes the following sections:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Overview

 

This overview provides a high-level discussion of our operating results and some of the trends that affect our business. We believe that an understanding of these trends is important to understanding our financial results for fiscal 2015, as well as our future prospects. We do not intend this summary to be exhaustive, or to be a substitute for the detailed discussion and analysis provided elsewhere in this report, including our consolidated financial statements and accompanying notes.

 

Financial Results and Trends

 

Revenues for 2015 were $249.9 million, a 12.0% increase compared to 2014, in which we reported revenues of $223.1 million. The increase in total revenues was primarily related to a $26.1 million increase in our revenues from micro-transactions (in-app purchases) and a $1.9 million increase from advertisements and offers.  These increases were partially offset by a $1.2 million decrease in premium and feature phone revenues due to the continued migration of users from feature phones to smartphone devices and our decision to concentrate our product development efforts exclusively towards developing new free-to-play titles for smartphones, tablets and other next-generation platforms.

 

Revenues for 2014 were $223.1 million, a 111.3% increase compared to 2013, in which we reported revenues of $105.6 million. The increase in total revenues was primarily related to a $103.0 million increase in our revenues from micro-transactions (in-app purchases) and a $22.6 million increase in our revenues from advertisements and offers.  These increases were partially offset by an $8.1 million decrease in premium and feature phone revenues.

 

We have concentrated our product development efforts towards developing games for smartphone and tablet devices.  We generate the majority of our revenue from Apple’s iOS platform, which accounted for 60.5%, 61.8%, and 59.6% of our total revenue for the years ended December 31, 2015, 2014, and 2013, respectively.  We generated the majority of this iOS-related revenue through the Apple App Store, which represented 51.7%, 52.2%, and 50.1% of our total revenue for the years ended December 31, 2015, 2014, and 2013, respectively, with the significant majority of such revenue derived from in-app purchases.  We generated the balance of our iOS-related revenue from offers and

advertisements in games distributed on the Apple App Store.  In addition, we generated approximately 38.1%, 35.4%, and 30.5% of our total revenue for the years ended December 31, 2015, 2014, and 2013, respectively, from the Android platform.  We generated the majority of our Android-related revenue through the Google Play Store, which represented 27.4%, 24.8%, 19.2% of our total revenue for the years ended December 31, 2015, 2014,and 2013, respectively, with the significant majority of such revenue derived from in-app purchases.   We generated the balance of our Android-related revenue from other platforms that distribute apps that run the Android operating system (e.g., the Amazon App Store) and through offers and advertisements in games distributed through the Google Play Store and other Android platforms.

 

We are dedicated to extending our leadership positions in the action, celebrity, sports, and simulation gaming genres.  Our leadership in the action category remains strong with our Deer Hunter and Contract Killer franchises, and we hope to expand that leadership in 2016 with the launch of Frontline Commando Rivals, which is the title under development through our strategic partnership to bring Tencent’s, highly successful shooter in China, WeFire, to North America, Australia, New Zealand, EMEA and South America in 2016.  We established our leadership in the celebrity gaming genre with Kim Kardashian: Hollywood, and we extended that leadership with the launch of our Kendall and Kylie game and with announcements of games to be developed with several additional celebrities, including Taylor Swift.  Our sports label is headlined by our Tap Sports Baseball and Racing Rivals franchises, which we hope to maintain as the top baseball and racing franchises, respectively, on mobile in 2016.  The simulation category includes our Cooking Dash and Diner Dash franchises, and we look to bolster our position in this category in 2016 through a game featuring Gordon Ramsay and eventually through an invest-express resource management title developed out of our Portland, Oregon studio.

 

We believe that our games consistently have high production values, are visually appealing and have engaging core gameplay.  These characteristics have typically helped to drive installs and awareness of our games and resulted in highly positive consumer reviews.  We also believe that we have been a consistently good partner of both Apple and Google, which has contributed to the majority of our games being featured on their storefronts when they are commercially released.   

 

We work closely with our celebrity licensors to engage their social media audiences and build games that will resonate with their unique fan bases.  Our celebrity games utilize transmedia storytelling, leveraging the celebrity’s built-in social media fan base to drive installs and awareness of the game, and then attempting to surprise and delight those fans with real-world events and other game content based on the celebrity’s life.  Our goal is for the game content to become entwined with the celebrity’s persona and social media presence, and to otherwise enhance interaction with the celebrity’s fans.  We also plan to work to build and nurture social communities in and around the games themselves, creating a new vehicle for strong, personal engagement with the celebrity’s fan base.  In order to capitalize on the impact of our celebrity licensors, we need to differentiate each game we release and space out our launch dates in order to avoid cannibalization of revenue from our existing games and to ensure that each game resonates with our players. 

 

However, for us to continue driving installs and awareness of our games and to improve monetization and retention of our players, we must first ensure that each game we develop is built with strong core gameplay and a core monetization loop that incentivizes players to make in-app purchases.  In addition, we must regularly update our games with compelling new content, deliver socio-competitive features like tournaments, player-versus-player gameplay and live events and build and nurture social media communities around our franchises both in-game and holistically via community features such as dedicated social channels.  We have also made significant investments in our proprietary analytics and monetization infrastructure.  With our enhanced analytics capabilities, we intend to devote resources towards segmenting and learning more about players of each of our franchises.  We aim to connect our analytics and monetization infrastructure to every element of our business – from marketing to merchandising.

   

We also plan to continue monitoring the successful aspects of our games to drive downloads and enhance monetization and retention, whether by optimizing advertising revenue within each title, securing additional compelling licensing arrangements, building enhanced and more complex core gameplay, adding additional social features, tournaments and events or otherwise.  Optimizing advertising revenue within our games requires us to continue taking advantage of positive trends in the mobile advertising space, particularly as brands continue to migrate budgets from web to mobile.  Continuing to drive installs and awareness of our games through licensing efforts requires that we continue to

partner with celebrities, social influencers, organizations and brands that resonate with potential players of our games.  Partnering with desirable licensing partners and renewing our existing licenses requires that we continue to develop successful games based on licensed content and are able to compete with other mobile gaming companies on financial and other terms in signing such partners.  tinue introducing third-party licensed brands, properties and personalities into our games as additional licensed content, for cameo appearances or for limited time events in order to drive awareness and monetization.

 

Across the globe our industry is evidencing that hit titles generally remain higher in the top grossing charts for longer.  We believe this is due to the continued specialization and investment of teams and companies in their hit titles, and the live, social nature of certain games.  Our business developments and strategy position us to take advantage of these trends, as evidenced by the longevity of our Kim Kardashian: Hollywood and Racing Rivals titles and the continued strength of our Cooking Dash 2016 title.  We plan to focus on regularly updating and otherwise supporting our most successful games in order to ensure that those games monetize and retain users for even longer periods of time.

 

Our net loss in the year ended December 31, 2015 was $7.2 million versus net income of $8.1 million in the year ended December 31, 2014.  This change was primarily due to an increase in cost of revenue of $22.0 million, a decrease in income tax benefit of $7.7 million related to the release of a portion of our valuation allowance resulting from our acquisition of Cie Games the prior year, and an increase in operating expenses of $13.1 million.  These unfavorable factors were partially offset by an increase in revenue of $26.8 million.  See “—Results of Operations—Comparison of the Years Ended December 31, 2015 and 2014” below for further details. Our operating results were also affected by fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates of the currencies in which we incurred meaningful operating expenses (principally the British Pound Sterling, Euro, Chinese Renminbi, Russian Ruble, and Indian Rupee), and our customers’ reporting currencies, which fluctuated significantly in 2014 and 2015.

 

 

Our net income in the year ended December 31, 2014 was $8.1 million versus a net loss of $19.9 million in the year ended December 31, 2013.  This increase in our net income was primarily due to an increase in revenues of $117.5 million, and an increase in income tax benefit of $4.7 million.  These favorable factors were partially offset by an increase in cost of revenues of $48.7 million, an increase in operating expenses of $44.0 million, and a decrease in interest and other income of $1.5 million.  See “—Results of Operations—Comparison of the Year Ended December 31, 2014 and 2013” below for further details.  Our operating results were also affected by fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates of the currencies in which we incurred meaningful operating expenses (principally the British Pound Sterling, Euro, Chinese Renminbi, Russian Ruble, and Indian Rupee), and our customers’ reporting currencies, which fluctuated significantly in 2013 and 2014.

 

Our ability to achieve and sustain profitability depends not only on our ability to grow our revenues, but also on our ability to manage our operating expenses.  The largest component of our recurring expenses is personnel costs, which consist of salaries, benefits and incentive compensation, including bonuses and stock-based compensation.  We expect our personnel costs to increase in 2016, primarily due to our plans to bolster our studios by continuing to hire additional development personnel in North America.

 

Cash and cash equivalents at December 31, 2015 totaled $180.5 million, an increase of $109.6 million from the $70.9 million balance at December 31, 2014.  This increase was primarily due to $125.2 million of net proceeds we received from the sale of 21,000,000 shares of our common stock to Red River Investments Limited, or Red River, an affiliate of Tencent Holdings Limited, or Tencent, during the second quarter of 2015, and $6.1 million of aggregate proceeds from warrant exercises, option exercises and purchases under our employee stock purchase program that occurred during the year ended December 31, 2015. These inflows were partially offset by $11.5 million of net cash used in operations, which was primarily related to a $31.8 million increase in prepaid royalties associated with minimum guaranteed royalty payments made to our celebrity and other licensors and $6.9 million of cash used in investing activities. 

 

Key Operating Metrics

 

We manage our business by tracking various non-financial operating metrics that give us insight into user behavior in our games. The three metrics that we use most frequently are Daily Active Users (DAU), Monthly Active Users (MAU), and Average Revenue Per Daily Active User (ARPDAU).  Our methodology for calculating DAU, MAU, and ARPDAU may differ from the methodology used by other companies to calculate similar metrics.

 

DAU is the number of individuals who played a particular smartphone game on a particular day.  An individual who plays two different games on the same day is counted as two active users for that day when we aggregate DAU across games.  In addition, an individual who plays the same game on two different devices during the same day (e.g., an iPhone and an iPad) is also counted as two active users for each such day when we average or aggregate DAU over time.  Average DAU for a particular period is the average of the DAUs for each day during that period.  We use DAU as a measure of player engagement with the titles that our players have downloaded.

 

MAU is the number of individuals who played a particular smartphone game in the month for which we are calculating the metric.  An individual who plays two different games in the same month is counted as two active users for that month when we aggregate MAU across games.  In addition, an individual who plays the same game on two different devices during the same month (e.g., an iPhone and an iPad) is also counted as two active users for each such month when we average or aggregate MAU over time.  Average MAU for a particular period is the average of the MAUs for each month during that period.  We use the ratio between DAU and MAU as a measure of player retention.

 

ARPDAU is the total free-to-play smartphone revenue – consisting of micro-transactions, advertisements and offers – for the measurement period divided by the number of days in the measurement period divided by the DAU for the measurement period. ARPDAU reflects game monetization.  Under our revenue recognition policy, we recognize these revenues over the estimated average playing period of a user, but our methodology for calculating our DAU does not align with our revenue recognition policy for micro-transactions and offers, under which we defer revenues.  For example, if a title is introduced in the last month of a quarter, we defer a substantial portion of the micro-transaction and offer revenue to future months, but the entire DAU for the newly released title is included in the month of launch.

 

In addition, we also analyze social followers when determining which celebrities we might wish to partner with in developing games. Our social followers metric represents the aggregate number of individuals who follow our celebrity licensors on social media platforms (as reported by such platforms).  We calculate the aggregate number of social followers of a particular celebrity by adding the total followers of such celebrity on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Vevo.  There is fan overlap among these social channels and among our various celebrity licensors, and such aggregate numbers have not been deduplicated.  We use the number of social followers as a measure of the potential reach and engagement a particular celebrity may have with players of our games.

 

We calculate DAU, MAU and ARPDAU for only our primary distribution platforms, such as Apple’s App Store, the Google Play Store, Amazon’s Appstore and the Mac App Store; we are not able to calculate these metrics across all of our distribution channels. In addition, the platforms that we include for purposes of this calculation have changed over time, and we expect that they will continue to change as our business evolves, but we do not expect that we will adjust prior metrics to take any such additions or deletions of distribution platforms into account. We believe that calculating these metrics for only our primary distribution platforms at a given period is generally representative of the metrics for all of our distribution platforms. Moreover, we rely on the data analytics software that we incorporate into our games to calculate and report the DAU, MAU and ARPDAU of our games, and we make certain adjustments to the analytics data to address inconsistencies between the information as reported and our DAU and MAU calculation methodology.

 

Beginning in the first quarter of 2014, we have estimated the DAU and MAU for certain older titles because the analytics tools incorporated into those titles are incompatible with newer device operating systems (e.g., iOS 9), preventing us from collecting complete data. For these titles, we estimate DAU and MAU by extrapolating from each affected title’s historical data in light of the behavior of similar titles for which complete data is available.  The table below sets forth our aggregate DAU, MAU and ARPDAU for all of our then-active smartphone titles for the periods specified, followed by a qualitative discussion of the changes in these metrics. Aggregate DAU and MAU include users of

both our free-to-play and premium titles, whereas aggregate ARPDAU is calculated based only on revenues from our free-to-play games. Aggregate DAU and MAU for each period presented represents the aggregate metric for the last month of the period. For example, DAU for the three months ended December 31, 2015 is aggregate daily DAU for the month of December 2015 calculated for all active smartphone free-to-play and premium titles in that month across the distribution platforms for which we calculate the metric.

 

 

The decrease in aggregate DAU and MAU for the three months ended December 31, 2015 as compared to the same period of the prior year was primarily related to fewer downloads of our new title launches in the fourth quarter of 2015 as compared to the fourth quarter of 2014 and lower retention of users for existing titles, particularly for our Kim Kardashian: Hollywood,  Racing Rivals and Deer Hunter 2014 titles. Our aggregate ARPDAU increased for the three months ended December 31, 2015 as compared to the same period of the prior year, as we improved monetization on certain titles, particularly through increased use of social features in those games.   Future increases in our aggregate DAU, MAU and ARPDAU will depend on our ability to retain current players, attract new paying players, launch new games and expand into new markets and distribution platforms.

 

We rely on a very small portion of our total users for nearly all of our revenues derived from in-app purchases. Since the launch of our first free-to-play titles in the fourth quarter of 2010, the percentage of unique paying users for our largest revenue-generating free-to-play games has typically been less than 2%, when measured as the number of unique paying users on a given day divided by the number of unique users on that day, though this percentage fluctuates, and it may be higher than 2% for certain of our games during specific, relatively short time periods, such as immediately following worldwide launch or the week following content updates, marketing campaigns or certain other events.

 

Significant Transactions

 

Tencent Investment

 

On April 29, 2015, we entered into a Purchase Agreement with Tencent and Tencent’s controlled affiliate, Red River, pursuant to which we issued to Red River an aggregate of 21,000,000 shares of our common stock at a purchase price of $6.00 per share, for aggregate net proceeds of $125.2 million, after offering expenses.  We issued 12,500,000 of these shares to Red River on April 29, 2015 and issued the remaining 8,500,000 shares at a second closing on June 3, 2015.  In addition, we entered into a registration rights agreement with Tencent and Red River pursuant to which we agreed to file up to two registration statements with the SEC within 45 days of a request made by Red River at any time following the six month anniversary of the initial closing and to use all reasonable efforts to have such registration statement declared effective by the SEC within 120 days after such request.

 

Acquisition of Cie Games

 

On August 20, 2014, we completed the acquisition of Cie Games, Inc., or Cie Games, a developer of racing genre mobile games based in Long Beach, California.  We acquired Cie Games to leverage its racing genre expertise, assembled workforce and existing mobile games in order to expand our game offerings.  The purchase price consideration included 9,982,886 shares of our common stock valued at $5.09 per share as of the closing date of the acquisition, for an aggregate of $50.8 million in share consideration.  In addition, we agreed to pay approximately $29.5 million in cash consideration, of which $1.9 million was paid during the year ended December 31, 2015, for total overall consideration paid of $80.3 million.  We are holding back 2,139,190 of the 9,982,886 shares issued in the acquisition until the date that is 30 days after the 18 month anniversary of the closing to satisfy potential indemnification claims under the merger agreement for the acquisition.    All outstanding Cie Games capital stock and stock options were cancelled at the closing of the