The problem
Casual players cycled through forgettable puzzle apps, and Istanbul’s engineers watched global hits get built elsewhere — no Turkish studio had yet shown that a world-class mobile franchise could come out of Turkey.
How it works
Peak makes cartoon match-3 puzzlers: blast cubes through thousands of levels in Toy Blast and Toon Blast, join teams, and compete in weekly tournaments. A live-ops machine ships fresh levels and events non-stop, and players spend on boosters, coins and extra lives. Zynga had already bought Peak’s card-games studio for $100M in 2017 before coming back for the whole company.
Pain points
Abandoned puzzle apps, aggressive paywalls, and ad-heavy clones that burn players out.
Business model
Pure live-services monetisation: free downloads at massive scale converted into in-app purchases from a 12M daily audience — the forever-franchise cash flow Zynga wanted.
Challenges
Two mature titles carry the legacy, facing newer rivals like Royal Match; and inside Zynga the Istanbul team must keep shipping hits without losing its talent to rival studios.
Funding
- Raised: no public venture rounds disclosed; founder Sidar Sahin was the company’s biggest shareholder at exit (TechCrunch, Jun 2020).
- Exit: $1.8B announced ($900M cash + $900M Zynga stock), closing at ~$1.85B in July 2020 (GamesIndustry.biz) — Turkey’s first billion-dollar-plus startup exit.
Latest — July 2020
On 2 July 2020 Zynga closed the Peak acquisition for $1.85B: Toon Blast and Toy Blast (12M combined daily players) came under Zynga’s umbrella, with CEO Sidar Sahin and the existing management team continuing from the Istanbul office.