A Thinking Ape

Overview

A Thinking Ape is a Vancouver mobile-game studio founded in 2008 by Kenshi Arasaki, Wilkins Chung, and Eric Diep. The founders entered Y Combinator's Winter 2008 batch with social chat product Chatterous, then discovered that players used chat to deepen game relationships. That insight produced community-centric free-to-play titles including Kingdoms at War and Party in My Dorm.^[1]

On November 18, 2020, Embracer announced that DECA Games had agreed to acquire 100 percent of the studio. The initial price was $31 million, or $28 million on a cash-and-debt-free basis, plus up to $74 million in contingent ten-year milestone consideration. Later ownership records strongly indicate the transaction closed, but the exact legal closing date and final consideration were not found.

This is an acquired-product survival story, not a shutdown. The studio remains inside Embracer's mobile business, its current site lists six games, and multiple titles remain in Apple's App Store. A 2024 restructuring reduced staff but did not close the company.

Founding Story

Diep left the University of Waterloo at 22, moved to San Francisco, and gained traction with Facebook applications and quizzes. He met Arasaki and Chung while they were Canadian expatriates working at Amazon. The three left Silicon Valley jobs in 2008, formed A Thinking Ape, and entered YC.^[2][3]

Their initial product, Chatterous, was a social chat application. Users began treating it as an extension to games. The founders concluded that chat could amplify game mechanics and create relationships that outlasted an individual session.

Kingdoms at War began as an experiment: wrap a game around the Chatterous chat engine. The combination of a social layer with massively multiplayer role-playing mechanics produced strategic behavior the studio had not scripted. The founders used product data and their own play sessions to identify what was working, then hired around those mechanics.^[4]

Party in My Dorm reused the same thesis in a different theme and was described by the company in 2015 as its most successful reimagining. The studio later explored casino, city-building, 4X, gacha, and puzzle concepts, but community remained the organizing idea. A product leader wrote: “The success of these new titles come from thinking about how we build communities.”

The team moved to Vancouver around 2010 to improve hiring and retention. The 2015 operating model used small autonomous teams, discipline leads, extensive product data, and tolerance for internal dissent. By 2014 the company had approximately 60 employees.^[2]

The packet contains no second direct founder quote about the origin, acquisition, or alternative bids. The acquisition announcement quotes Arasaki saying the studio was becoming part of Embracer, but that statement records the transaction rather than founding insight.

Timeline

• Winter 2008: Chatterous entered Y Combinator.
• Around 2009: Kingdoms at War launched and reached a top-grossing mobile chart, according to the studio.
• 2010: The company moved to Vancouver; Party in My Dorm first released.
• 2014: A Thinking Ape had approximately 60 employees.
• 2015: The studio said both revenue and team size were still growing roughly six years after Kingdoms at War.
• 2016: The company reported four live titles and one additional game in production.^[5]
• November 18, 2020: Embracer announced DECA Games' agreement to acquire 100 percent of the studio.^[6]
• February 3, 2021: Embracer said the acquisition had not been consolidated by December 31 and remained expected to close during the first quarter.^[7]
• April 2024: A restructuring affected an undisclosed number of staff across community, engineering, design, analysis, art, and recruiting.
• December 2025: Embracer listed A Thinking Ape as an internal DECA studio, strongly indicating closure of the acquisition.^[8]
• May 2026: Reporting said the studio would remain with DECA inside Embracer's retained mobile business.^[9]