Social First has officially acquired the intellectual property (IP) rights to the Pixel Worlds and Tiny Troopers franchises as part of Kukouri Mobile Entertainment‘s decision to cease all game development operations.
Kukouri Mobile Entertainment, a Finnish game developer, announced the end of its game-related activities. The company’s flagship titles included the social MMO Pixel Worlds, which was removed from all app stores at the close of 2024, and Tiny Troopers, a popular series with several installments.
As part of its restructuring, Kukouri has transferred the rights to its game IPs to Social First, another Finnish game development company.
Petri Piipari, CEO of Kukouri, explained, “Kukouri has been moving away from game development for a few years now. Unfortunately, Pixel Worlds has not been a commercially viable product for some time, and with the only active Tiny Troopers game being licensed to an outside publisher and developer, the difficult decision was made to close down all game operations.”
Kim Soares, CEO and founder of Social First, commented, “Many of the Social First team have been working at Kukouri on either or both of these IPs earlier in their careers, including myself. Both Pixel Worlds and Tiny Troopers were great games in their time, having tens of millions of players. So when we were approached by Kukouri regarding the possibility of acquiring the rights to these games, the decision was an easy one.”
Social First is currently developing Nexus Station, a spiritual successor to Pixel Worlds. The game entered Early Access on mobile in December, with the PC version slated for release on Steam in January.