PV Hugbúnaður hf.,

doing business as A trade name, trading name, or business name is a pseudonym used by companies that do not operate under their registered company name. The term for this type of alternative name is fictitious business name. Registering the fictitious name with ...

Plain Vanilla Games, was an Icelandic

video game developer A video game developer is a software developer specializing in video game development – the process and related disciplines of creating video games. A game developer can range from one person who undertakes all tasks to a large business with em ...

based in

Reykjavík Reykjavík is the Capital city, capital and largest city in Iceland. It is located in southwestern Iceland on the southern shore of Faxaflói, the Faxaflói Bay. With a latitude of 64°08′ N, the city is List of northernmost items, the worl ...

. Founded in October 2010 by Thor Fridriksson, the company is best known for developing the

trivia Trivia is information and data that are considered to be of little value. Modern usage of the term ''trivia'' dates to the 1960s, when college students introduced question-and-answer contests to their universities. A board game, ''Trivial Purs ...

-based mobile game ''

QuizUp ''QuizUp'' is a discontinued mobile game originally developed and published by Iceland-based Plain Vanilla Games and later operated by Glu Mobile. The game was a mobile trivia app similar to the game ''Trivial Pursuit''. ''QuizUp'' was a multip ...

'', at its peak the fastest-growing

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 ...

game ever.

History

Foundation and growth (2010–2013)

Plain Vanilla Games was founded by Thor Fridriksson,

chief executive officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...

. It published its first title ''The Moogies'' for pre-schooled aged kids on the

App store An app store, also called an app marketplace or app catalog, is a type of digital distribution platform for computer software called applications, often in a mobile context. Apps provide a specific set of functions which, by definition, do not i ...

in November 2011 but although critically acclaimed the game turned out to be a major flop which left Plain Vanilla indebted. Looking for a second product, Þorsteinn had realised that popular games like

Words with Friends ''Words with Friends'' is a multiplayer computer word game developed by Newtoy. Players take turns building words crossword-puzzle style in a manner similar to the classic board game ''Scrabble''. The rules of the two games are similar, but ''Wo ...

and

Draw Something ''Draw Something'' was a video game developed by OMGPop based on its browser game ''Draw My Thing'', launched on February 6, 2012. It won a Flurry App Spotlight Award in 2012. In the first five weeks after its launching, the game was downloaded ...

merely modified already existing analogue games. And while a mobile version of

Trivial Pursuit ''Trivial Pursuit'' is a board game in which winning is determined by a player's ability to answer trivia and popular culture questions. Players move their pieces around a board, the squares they land on determining the subject of a question the ...

was already on the market, it seemed rudimentary to him, lacking topical range and social interaction. He went to San Francisco to sell his idea but first ran into a wall of negativity: "It… wasn't easy. I thought I'd just charm my way in front of these VCs, share my big idea for a quiz platform, and they'd throw money my way. Not quite. Just connecting with the right people was a challenge. I'd cold call and ask for meetings, and they'd maybe be willing to set something up for 2, 3 months later. I had to be creative to get in front of these VCs. It maybe even bordered on stalking. In hindsight, maybe it was a bit creepy." In the end he sought out compatriot ''David Helgason'', the CEO of game development company

Unity Technologies Unity Software Inc. (doing business as Unity Technologies) is an American video game software development company based in San Francisco. It was founded in Denmark in 2004 as Over the Edge Entertainment and changed its name in 2007. Unity Techn ...

and with his endorsement received $1.2 million in seed funding. In 2012, he managed to convince an affiliate of

Lions Gate Entertainment Starz Entertainment Corp, formerly known officially as Lions Gate Entertainment Corporation and commonly as Lions Gate and/or Lionsgate, is a Canadian-American entertainment industry, entertainment company currently headquartered in Santa Monica ...

(LGF) to partner with Plain Vanilla on a trial trivia game for the Twilight series. The game, released in November 2012, was a hit with about 2 million registered users who gave the company valuable feedback.

Sequoia Capital Sequoia Capital Operations, LLC is an American venture capital firm headquartered in Menlo Park, California, specializing in seed stage, early stage, and growth stage investments in private companies across technology sectors. the firm had appro ...

started backing them as investors and Plain Vanilla added their partner Roelof Botha to its board, just like Ellie Wheeler of

Greycroft Partners Greycroft LP is an American venture capital firm. It manages over $3 billion in capital with investments in companies such as Bird, Bumble, HuffPost, Goop, Scopely, The RealReal, and Venmo. Greycroft was founded in 2006 by Alan Patricof, Dan ...

, Chinese holding company

Tencent Tencent Holdings Ltd. ( zh, s=腾讯, p=Téngxùn) is a Chinese Multinational corporation, multinational technology Conglomerate (company), conglomerate and holding company headquartered in Shenzhen. It is one of the highest grossing multimed ...

also became a strategic partner. The ''QuizUp'' app was launched in November 2013 for iPhones.

Dissolution and acquisition (2016)

On 31 August 2016, the company closed its Iceland headquarters, letting go all staff, though stating that they would continue to maintain ''QuizUp'' for a further three months. Plain Vanilla Games and ''QuizUp'' were acquired by

Glu Mobile Glu Mobile LLC is an American developer and publisher of mobile games. It was founded as Sorrent in 2001 and acquired Macrospace in 2004. Both companies collectively rebranded as Glu Mobile in 2005. In April 2021, the company was acquired by E ...

on 19 December 2016, the deal valued at , including forgiven debt.

References

Defunct software companies of Iceland Defunct video game companies Video game companies of Iceland Video game companies established in 2010 Video game companies disestablished in 2016 Video game development companies Mobile game companies Companies based in Reykjavík 2010 establishments in Iceland 2016 disestablishments in Iceland {{Iceland-company-stub