Scientific Games acquires Elk Studios

By paring Elk studio with OpenGaming, Scientific Games unlocks significant opportunity to distribute top-ranked games in the U.S. market

Scientific Games continues with the quick execution of its strategic vision, strengthening its original content offer and production abilities by acquiring ELK Studios, a leading and ground-breaking European casino games developer. The acquisition of a talented content studio represents another important step as Scientific Games aims to become the leading cross-platform of casino games.

Elk Studios has been able to provide millions of players with a fantastic gaming experience since 2013, through their innovative designs and ground-breaking mathematical models, as well as their mobile-first focus. This Swedish game studio is located in central Stockholm and works with a “quality over quantity” mentality, which has been constantly proven over the years. 

Wild Toro II, Katmandu and Cygnus are just some its most famous releases, and its games also feature the innovative X-iter™ tool, which lets players jump into the action through a selection of special predefined modes.

This is only the last acquisition of Scientific Games, which is investing and growing in the digital market. With ELK Studios as part of its in-house games portfolio, Scientific Games will now be able to produce even more innovative, engaging games. Furthermore, they’ll try getting ELK’s content to the North American markets, while improving its position also in the United Kingdom and in Europe.

 “Acquiring ELK Studios demonstrates once again our commitment to make targeted, value enhancing investments designed to advance our cross-platform content capabilities,” said Barry Cottle, President and CEO of Scientific Games. “The ELK Studios team is packed with talent and enhances our existing in-house teams and capabilities. The highly synergistic combination of their top-ranked games and our leading OpenGaming ecosystem offers exciting distribution opportunities in the U.S. and Canada. I am thrilled to welcome them to our team.”

ELK Studios has already gone live with many operators through OpenGaming, the market-leading ecosystem, and its titles have proved to be incredibly popular with many operators throughout the United Kingdom and Europe. The studio will now continue to work completely independently to create more beloved titles, but will have access to the vast array of resources Scientific Games can offer, such as commercial scale, market expansion, support in U.S. and Canada, game IP and data analytics tools.

Dylan Slaney, CEO iGaming at Scientific Games, said, “We have had a strategic partnership with ELK Studios for a number of years and its games have performed brilliantly across the OpenGaming platform. ELK is one of the most innovative, and top-ranked studios in iGaming. Their passion and enthusiasm for producing games of stand-out quality is infectious. They will play a pivotal role in helping us continue to provide players with even more immersive and engaging experiences.”
Filip Säfbeck at ELK Studios said, “This deal is the fruit of many years of hard work by a team that is fully committed to crafting high-quality online gaming experiences. We see it as the perfect time to join the Scientific Games team, given that our ambitions to grow through innovation and into the U.S. and Canada are in total alignment. We have experienced first-hand through our OpenGaming partnership that Scientific Games can take our games to the next level. This acquisition offers us a solid base to bring to market a wide range of exciting new slots more smoothly than ever to online casino partners across the globe.”

Read more about Elk Studios right here, at AboutSlots’ full review, or check out our take on SG Digital!