Mobile game publisher Voodoo acquires social app BeReal for €500 million

For the 2022 iPhone App of the Year, things are getting real. Voodoo, a video game company best known for its library of mobile titles, has acquired social app BeReal.

The deal, which comes with an estimated price tag of €500 million (~$542.4 million), unites two Paris-based companies in the tech sector. Voodoo, which publishes casual games like Helix Jump and Hole.io, will add BeReal to its list of holdings. Voodoo’s games have been downloaded more than six billion times as of 2022.

BeReal has cooled off considerably since its hot start. The app first drew attention with its unique content model, which delivers daily, time-sensitive notifications that prompt users to share authentic snapshots of their daily activities. As the novelty of that format wore off, BeReal’s daily active user count declined. According to the New York Times, which cited data from Sensor Tower, BeReal’s DAUs fell by 61% between October 2022 and March 2023.

Even during BeReal’s peak, the app’s leadership team determined that strong revenue streams would be needed to survive in the crowded social media landscape. BeReal first explored the idea of monetizing through paid, premium features, but more recent initiatives have focused on branded content. Features called RealPeople and RealBrands allowed celebrities and companies to interact with the app’s user base. As this summer’s festival season commenced, BeReal added to its suite of products with RealEvents

, which promised on-the-ground coverage from hotspots like Coachella.

Even with the French connection, a mobile game giant may seem like a strange bedfellow for BeReal. But the app’s focus on monetization helps explain why Voodoo is interested in it. The publisher is infamous for the large number of ads it serves to its players. BeReal potentially offers more inventory for ads, even though that push would undermine the “authentic” approach to content that first made BeReal a household name.

“BeReal achieved incredible user loyalty and growth, showing there is a universal need to share real, unfiltered experiences with close friends,” said Voodoo CEO Alexandre Yazdi in a statement. “We are very excited to bring our teams together and leverage Voodoo’s know-how and differentiated technologies to scale BeReal into the iconic social network for authenticity.”

According to Voodoo, BeReal has about 40 million active users, though the number of daily active users is likely much lower.

Aymeric Roffé, the CEO of Voodoo-owned social app Wizz, will become the BeReal CEO. According to Engadget, Outgoing CEO Alexis Barreyat will stay with the company “in the short term” before moving on to pursue other ventures.