Lake Forest-based Reflexive Entertainment Inc., a maker of video games played on computers, was bought Wednesday by online retailer Amazon.com Inc. for undisclosed terms.
The deal was never formally announced. Rather, news broke by way of a blog post by Lars Brubaker, Reflexive’s chief executive.
“As I’m sure you can all imagine this is a very exciting day for us at Reflexive. It means we’ll be able to expand our distribution network to include Amazon’s amazing distribution channel. With Amazon we will bring a huge new group of customers into play,” Brubaker said on his blog.
Amazon didn’t announce the deal, likely because it’s dollar amount was small enough that it didn’t require public disclosure.
Reflexive makes what’s called “casual video games,” that can be accessed via its Web site and played on PCs, Apple computers and Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox 360.
Casual games target a mainstream audience and typically have simpler rules, such as a puzzle game.
They are much quicker and cheaper to produce and distribute than their heavyweight online counterparts, such as the so-called “massive multiplayer” online games made by Vivendi SA’s Blizzard Entertainment Inc. in Irvine.
Irvine’s NHN USA Inc., the local operations for South Korea’s NHN Corp., also makes casual games.
It’s unclear if Amazon will be selling Reflexive’s games.
“We could see the service incorporated directly into the Amazon site and offering games with the benefit of quick purchases via your Amazon account,” Matthew Humphries said in a report on technology blog Geek.com.
Reflexive, which started in 1997, has more than 1,000 casual games under its belt, according to its Web site.
