is a Japanese video game development studio established in 2011 by

CyberAgent is a Japanese digital advertising company, which was founded in 1998 by Susumu Fujita and headquartered in Shibuya, Tokyo. It is owned by Susumu Fujita with 20.50% interest; Fujita is the representative director, while Yusuke Hidaka is the execut ...

. Mobile and

e-commerce E-commerce (electronic commerce) refers to commercial activities including the electronic buying or selling products and services which are conducted on online platforms or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile co ...

company

DeNA is a Japanese provider of mobile portal and e-commerce websites headquartered in Shibuya, Tokyo. It owns the Mobage cell phone platform and also operates other services, including the e-commerce website DeNA Shopping (formerly: Bidders). H ...

acquired a 24% stake in the studio in 2012, and

Nintendo is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational video game company headquartered in Kyoto. It develops, publishes, and releases both video games and video game consoles. The history of Nintendo began when craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi ...

acquired another 5% stake in 2018, leaving CyberAgent with 69% of the shares and as such, they are the parent company of Cygames. From its formation, the company produced

mobile game A mobile game is a video game that is typically played on a mobile phone. The term also refers to all games that are played on any Mobile device, portable device, including from mobile phone (feature phone or smartphone), tablet computer, table ...

s, initially on the

Mobage is a portal and social network for games owned by the Japanese company DeNA. It derives its name from the Japanese slang word for mobile games. History In 2011, as part of a strategy to unify its services, DeNA rebranded Mobage Town as Mob ...

platform, and from 2013 on Android and

iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

. The company headquarters is located in Tokyo while other divisions are located in

Osaka is a Cities designated by government ordinance of Japan, designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the List of cities in Japan, third-most populous city in J ...

and

Saga Sagas are prose stories and histories, composed in Iceland and to a lesser extent elsewhere in Scandinavia. The most famous saga-genre is the (sagas concerning Icelanders), which feature Viking voyages, migration to Iceland, and feuds between ...

in Japan and

Seoul Seoul, officially Seoul Special Metropolitan City, is the capital city, capital and largest city of South Korea. The broader Seoul Metropolitan Area, encompassing Seoul, Gyeonggi Province and Incheon, emerged as the world's List of cities b ...

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the southern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and borders North Korea along the Korean Demilitarized Zone, with the Yellow Sea to the west and t ...

. Key IPs include ''

Uma Musume Pretty Derby is a Japanese media franchise created by Cygames. A mobile game for iOS and Android was scheduled to debut in late 2018 and then delayed to February 2021. A 13-episode anime television series adaptation by P.A. Works aired ...

'' (2021), '' Princess Connect! Re:Dive'' (2018), ''

Shadowverse ''Shadowverse'' is a digital collectible card game developed and published by Cygames. It was released free-to-play for iOS and Android devices in June 2016. macOS and Windows versions were released in October 2016. ''Shadowverse'' employs an an ...

'' (2016), ''

Granblue Fantasy ''Granblue Fantasy'' is a Japanese role-playing video game developed by Cygames for Android, iOS and web browsers, which first released in Japan in March 2014. The game reunites music composer Nobuo Uematsu and art director Hideo Minaba, who pre ...

'' (2014), ''

The Idolmaster Cinderella Girls is a Japanese free-to-play simulation video game co-developed by Cygames and Bandai Namco Studios for the Mobage social network platform for mobile phones. It was first released on November 28, 2011, for feature phones, and compatibil ...

'' (2011, with

Bandai Namco Entertainment is a Japanese multinational corporation, multinational video game video game publisher, publisher, and the video game branch of the wider Bandai Namco Holdings group. Founded in 2006 as it is the successor to Namco's home and arcade video game ...

), and ''

Rage of Bahamut is a digital collectible card battle game developed by Cygames and published by DeNA. It was a social card game released on Mobage's mobile game network, in Japan in 2011 and worldwide in 2012. The game exceeded three million players outsid ...

'' (2011). The company began development of

console games A video game console is an electronic device that outputs a video signal or image to display a video game that can typically be played with a game controller. These may be home consoles, which are generally placed in a permanent location connec ...

in 2015. In 2016, Cygames announced the establishment of an anime studio

CygamesPictures is a Japanese animation studio subsidiary of Cygames. Establishment In 2015, Cygames announced the creation of its own anime is a Traditional animation, hand-drawn and computer animation, computer-generated animation originating fro ...

. The company also began funding anime for its mobile property and for new projects and adaptations for anime. The company also entered the

manga are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long history in earlier Japanese art. The term is used in Japan to refer to both comics ...

, music and design market in the same time period.

History

''Cygames, Inc.'' was established in 2011 by

, a Japanese web services company. In 2012,

purchased a 24% stake in Cygames. Shortly thereafter, the studio was chosen by '' Game Developer'' (formerly Gamasutra) as one of the top ten game developers of the year. In June 2012, Cygames founded CyDesignation, a company specialized in Design, Illustration, Game planning and Game development. In March 2016, Cygames announced the establishment of its own anime production division and anime studio as a subsidiary known as

to do planning, production and animation both for Cygames own IPs and original anime projects as well. In June 2016, Cygames announced the acquisition of the gaming and anime background studio Kusanagi. In 2016, Cygames announced that it was developing '' Project Awakening'', its first large-format title for consoles as well as the establishment of their Osaka studio focused on console games. In May 2017, Cygames and

Kodansha is a Japanese privately held publishing company headquartered in Bunkyō, Tokyo. Kodansha publishes manga magazines which include ''Nakayoshi'', ''Morning (magazine), Morning'', ''Afternoon (magazine), Afternoon'', ''Evening (magazine), Eveni ...

announced that they formed a partnership to launch a new label called Cycomi to release volumes in print distributed by Kodansha for manga already published online by Cygames on its digital manga website called Cycomics, while Cygames' established its first overseas subsidiary, Cygames Korea. However, in April 2019, Cygames formed a new partnership with

Hitotsubashi Group The is a Japanese family-owned publishing vertical keiretsu in Hitotsubashi, Chiyoda, Tokyo. It is composed of Shogakukan, Shueisha, Hakusensha and related publishing companies. The name of the group is derived from the location of its majo ...

(

Shogakukan is a Japanese publisher of comics, magazines, light novels, dictionaries, literature, non-fiction, home media, and other media in Japan. Shogakukan founded Shueisha, which also founded Hakusensha. These are three separate companies, but ...

and

Shueisha is a Japanese publishing company headquartered in Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. Shueisha is the largest publishing company in Japan. It was established in 1925 as the entertainment-related publishing division of Japanese publisher Shogakukan. The ...

). On June 8, 2017, Cygames and its parent company CyberAgent announced that they jointly established CA-Cygames Anime Fund, a fund for investing in anime IP which will inject funds to the anime production committee to obtain the rights to stream anime videos on the Internet and produce games, with a total amount of funds to be three billion yen. In 2017, Cygames founded its

esports Esports (), short for electronic sports, is a form of competition using video games. Esports often takes the form of organized, multiplayer video game competitions, particularly between professional players, played individually or as teams. ...

team, Cygames Beast, with ''

Street Fighter is a Media mix, Japanese media franchise centered on a series of fighting games developed and published by Capcom. Street Fighter 1, The first game in the series was released in 1987, followed by List of Street Fighter video games, six other ma ...

'' players

Daigo Umehara is a Japanese esports player and author who competes competitively at Fighting game, fighting video games. He specializes in 2D arcade game, arcade fighting games, mainly those released by Capcom. Known as "Daigo" or "The Beast" in the West and ...

Snake Eyez Darryl S. Lewis, better known by his in-game name Snake Eyez, is an American professional fighting game player. He is considered one of the best Zangief players of ''Street Fighter IV'' and ''Street Fighter V''. Lewis was the highest seeded player ...

, and PR Balrog. Since July 2017, Cygames is an official sponsor of Italian football team

Juventus Juventus Football Club (; from , ), commonly known as Juventus or colloquially as Juve (), is an Italian professional Association football, football List of football clubs in Italy, club based in Turin, Piedmont, who compete in Serie A, the ...

. In April 2018, a partnership with Nintendo was announced to develop the game ''

Dragalia Lost ''Dragalia Lost'' was an action role-playing game developed by Cygames and published by Nintendo. It was released for Android and iOS in September 2018 before being discontinued in November 2022. The game received mixed reviews from critics a ...

'', for the purpose of facilitating the partnership Nintendo will obtain approximately five percent of Cygames's issued stocks. In May 2018, Cygames announced the establishment of a subsidiary for music production and artist management called Cymusic. In April 2021, Cygames announced the establishment of a subsidiary called CySphere which is focused on 3DCG production for anime and games. Cygames produced the anime ''

The Marginal Service ''The Marginal Service'' (stylized in all caps) is an original Japanese anime television series animated by studio 3Hz and produced by Cygames. It is directed by Masayuki Sakoi and written by Kenta Ihara, with Yoshio Kosakai designing the chara ...

'', which started airing in 2023. In April 2023, Cygames opened two more international offices focused in marketing for its regions; one in

Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

called Cygames America and one in

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

called Cygames Europe. Since January 2024, Cygames is an official sponsor of

Sagan Tosu is a Japanese professional Association football, football club based in Tosu, Saga, Tosu, Saga Prefecture. The club plays in the J2 League, the second tier of Japanese football, since 2025 following relegation from the J1 League in 2024 J1 Leag ...

. In October 2024, Cygames was announced as the title sponsor of the

Breeders' Cup Sprint The Breeders' Cup Sprint is an American Weight for Age Grade I Thoroughbred horse race for horses three years old and older. Run on dirt over a distance of 6 Furlongs ( mile), the race has been held annually since 1984 at a different racetrack in t ...

, a

horse race Horse racing is an equestrian performance activity, typically involving two or more horses ridden by jockeys (or sometimes driven without riders) over a set distance for competition. It is one of the most ancient of all sports, as its bas ...

run as part of the annual

Breeders' Cup The Breeders' Cup World Championships is an annual series of Graded stakes race, Grade I Thoroughbred racing, Thoroughbred horse races, operated by Breeders' Cup Limited, a company formed in 1982. From its inception in 1984 through 2006, it was ...

championships in American

thoroughbred racing Thoroughbred racing is a sport and industry involving the racing of Thoroughbred horses. It is governed by different national bodies. There are two forms of the sport – flat racing and jump racing, the latter known as National Hunt racing in ...

. The sponsorship was part of a promotion to mark Cygames' planned English-language release of the ''Uma Musume Pretty Derby'' mobile game. In April 2025, Cygames also sponsors the Unbridled Sidney Stakes on the

Kentucky Oaks The Kentucky Oaks is a Grade I stakes race for three-year-old Thoroughbred fillies staged annually in Louisville, Kentucky, United States. The race currently covers at Churchill Downs; the horses carry . The Kentucky Oaks is held on the Frida ...

, part of the annual

Kentucky Derby The Kentucky Derby () is an American Graded stakes race, Grade I stakes Thoroughbred racing, race run at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky. The race is run by three-year-old Thoroughbreds at a distance of . Colt (horse), Colts and geldin ...

. In December 2024, the company established a subscription-based video game service called Cygames ID for the purpose of using various services.

Games developed

Mobile/web browser games

Console/PC games

References

External links

* * {{Authority control Mobile game companies Video game companies established in 2011 Video game companies of Japan Video game development companies Japanese companies established in 2011 Software companies based in Tokyo CyberAgent