Lego Digital Play snaps up Manchester mobile studio ForthStar
· BehindLines newsroom
Lego Digital Play, a digital games company created separately from the Lego group, has bought ForthStar Games, a mobile games studio based in Manchester. According to GamesIndustry.biz and PocketGamer.biz, both of which rely on GamesBeat, the value of the deal was not disclosed.
What the takeover changes
PocketGamer.biz says the deal brings about 30 employees into Lego Digital Play, which until now had about 100 people, mostly in London and in Danish sites. The ForthStar team stays in Manchester. Paul Gouge takes charge of games for the whole of Lego Digital Play, and Alex Rigby continues to run ForthStar, described as a flagship studio, according to PocketGamer.biz.
Experienced founders
According to GamesIndustry.biz, Paul Gouge and Alex Rigby co-founded ForthStar in 2024, after creating three successful mobile studios, including Playdemic; the same outlet adds that ForthStar stayed under the radar until 2023. PocketGamer.biz instead dates ForthStar's creation to 2023: the two outlets differ on this point. Playdemic, the publisher of Golf Clash, was sold to Electronic Arts in 2021 for 1.4 billion dollars, which both sources confirm; PocketGamer.biz adds that Warner Bros. had bought it in 2017. According to GamesBeat, cited by PocketGamer.biz, Golf Clash has earned over a billion dollars in revenue. GamesIndustry.biz adds that ForthStar started with 14 Playdemic alumni and now has 30 employees, and that it raised 10 million dollars in funding from Griffin Game Partners.
The stated strategy
Lego Digital Play president Aaron Loeb tells GamesBeat that mobile is the most democratic market, the one where gamers from around the world are found, and that it lets the company reach children in every country. According to GamesIndustry.biz, Lego Digital Play was founded in 2025 to create authentic, wholly owned Lego experiences; PocketGamer.biz refers to early 2025. According to GamesIndustry.biz, the company had already bought the British studio Offroad Games in September 2026.
Why it matters
The purchase makes ForthStar the second mobile-games acquisition by Lego Digital Play reported in these sources, after Offroad Games in September 2026. It is a corporate announcement: PocketGamer.biz notes that the company has not detailed its upcoming games, and the price of the deal remains unknown.
The intended positioning
According to PocketGamer.biz, the aim of Lego Digital Play is to bring the Lego building system into digital games, with mobile as the best starting point for reaching children worldwide. The same outlet adds that the company says it wants to bring in teams that have a strong creative culture and share its values. ForthStar, for its part, has focused on designing and running live-service games at scale, according to PocketGamer.biz.