Vostu

Vostu was the largest social games developer in Brazil and Latin America in the early 2010s. The company was started in 2007 by Daniel Kafie, Mario Schlosser, and Joshua Kushner.

The main games developed by Vostu were Topfarm, Café Mania, MegaCity, Mini Fazenda, GolMania, Candy Dash, Riddle Pic, Shaking Vegas, Magic Valley, among others. These social games are available on Orkut, Facebook and Google +. Today, more than 100 million users are registered in Vostu applications: one in every four Brazilians play one or more of their products.

In 2011, the company was considered by Forbes Magazine as one of the top 10 startups in Brazil^[1] and Business Insider included it in the list of 100 world's most valuable startups.^[2] The company's current value is unknown and the company keeps secret about that value. However, TechCrunch had estimated at one time that its market value could reach $300 million. In 2011, the company announced the purchase of MP Game Studio, a company dedicated to casual & multiplayer games, expanding its portfolio of games. Later that same year, the company was sued by Zynga, alleging copyright infringement. An agreement between the companies closed the case.^[3]

In early 2012, Vostu conducted a restructuring of the company's departments, unifying developments of the games in the Buenos Aires, Argentina office and business operations in Brazil.^[4] In mid-2012, the company shows the results of this restructuring with the launch of new social, casual and mobile games.^[5]

By mid-2013, however, the company had laid off as much as two thirds of its personnel, with Schlosser and Kafie resigning their positions, and "internal management and political issues with the engineering and product teams" rendering the company "organizationally unable to add features or service games in a way that would keep players engaged".^[6]