Miniclip

Miniclip is a Swiss mobile game publisher and former browser game website that was first launched on 30 March 2001. It was started by Robert Small and Tihan Presbie with a budget of £40,000. In 2008, Miniclip was valued at over £275 million. In 2018, the company gained over $400 million in revenue through its mobile gaming hit, 8 Ball Pool.

History
As of July 2009, over 400 applications were hosted on its own website.

In February 2015, Tencent acquired majority stakes of Miniclip. In December 2016, Miniclip surpassed 1 billion downloads across its published mobile games on iOS-based, Android-based, and Windows Phone-based devices. In March 2022, Miniclip announced that it had reached 4 billion downloads worldwide with 8 Ball Pool alone accounting for 1 billion downloaded times.

In April 2021, Miniclip had celebrated its 21st anniversary. In response, the CEO of Miniclip claimed that it would be keeping away from developing browser-based games to prioritize its mobile gaming products, including Agar.io, 8 Ball Pool, Mini Militia, Ludo Party and more. In April 2022, Miniclip officially announced that it would begin prioritizing its mobile games. As a result, the browser game portal was shut down in July 2022 and the website lost all but its two most popular games of the time, Agar.io and 8 Ball Pool.

In June 2022, Miniclip agreed to acquire SYBO, the co-publisher and co-developer of Subway Surfers, in an undisclosed deal. The deal with SYBO went through in July 2022.

Mobile games
Miniclip has developed and published numerous mobile games for iOS, Android, Symbian, and Windows Phone. This includes 8 Ball Pool, Golf Battle, Gravity Guy, Bloons Tower Defense, Plague Inc. for Android, Berry Rush, Agar.io, Diep.io, Mini Militia, and Ludo Party. Miniclip’s removal of Golf Battle Rush Mode has been met with much criticism.

Other platforms
In September 2012, Microsoft announced on the Windows blog on 31 August 2012 (see also List of Xbox games on Windows) that Miniclip games would be able to distribute their games on the Xbox division of Windows 8. Miniclip games that are supported by Xbox for Windows 8 include Gravity Guy, iStunt 2, and Monster Island. Gravity Guy was released on Windows Store on 29 November 2010.

In April 2013, most Miniclip games for Windows 8 and Windows Phone were distributed for free for one year.

On 14 February 2017, Miniclip released their first mobile racer game which was compatible with Xbox One, PC, and PlayStation 4, titled MX Nitro.

Malicious software issues
On 1 September 2005, the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team issued an advisory concerning Miniclip: "The Retro64 / Miniclip CR64 Loader ActiveX control contains a buffer overflow vulnerability. This may allow a remote, unauthenticated attacker to execute an arbitrary code on a vulnerable system. Although the ActiveX control is no longer in use by either retro64.com or miniclip.com, any system that has used certain pages of these websites in the past (prior to September 2005) may be vulnerable." In 2006, several security firms reported that some Miniclip users had installed a "miniclipgameloader.dll" which contained the hostile code identified as "Trojan Downloader 3069.” In the same year, another download related to Miniclip installed "High Risk" malware called "Trojan-Downloader.CR64Loader.”