300 million. The number currently stands (December 2013) at about 400 million registered players. In 2007, Gameforge founded its first foreign branch, Gameforge SARL, established in Paris. After buying French development studio Nevrax, the subsidiary was commissioned to market the game “The Saga of Ryzom”. It was only a moderate success, leading to the sale of Ryzom in 2009. Gameforge owned other offices abroad, including Gameforge Holding Malta Ltd. with headquarters in Pietà. In November 2007, Gameforge ventured into the U.S. market as the first German online games company and founded Gameforge Productions Inc. based in San Francisco. Lars Koschin was placed in charge of branch management overseas. On April 23, 2008, Gameforge announced the establishment of four development studios. “Ticking Bomb Games”, based in Hamburg, was to develop several PC games, then be marketed by Gameforge. Managing directors were Tobias Severin and Marco Schultz; who both already had many years of experience in the game development field. Ralf C. Adam was introduced as a consultant, allowing them to make use of his 16 years’ professional experience. Their first game, Gilde1400, a browser game based on PC game “The Guild”, was released late October 2009. The beta phase ran for two weeks before it was published. The end of January 2009 brought the establishment of the second developer, “Rough Sea Games”, based in Mannheim, Germany. Just like Ticking Bomb, the studio was to take over development of PC and browser games. Matthias Schindler was elected CEO. He had been working in the game development for 15 years. In addition to the Hamburg and Mannheim studios, the company also co-operated with two other development studios: “Steroid Interactive” (Mainz) and “Inflammables” (Heidelberg). All four studios were gradually decommissioned: the offices in Hamburg, Mainz and Mannheim were sold on 1 January 2011; Inflammables closed with the end of Hellbreed in late 2011. At the end of 2008, the foundation of a subsidiary in the United States together with Frogster Interactive Pictures AG was unveiled. Gameforge was to be the primary stakeholder with 75 percent and following the purchase of 470,000 shares it was to then have acquired a stake of up to 20 percent from Frogster. However this joint venture was not achieved: conflicts of interest arose regarding the details. The company chose instead to become active with its own subsidiary, Frogster America Inc. 2010 onwards On March 19, 2010, Klaas Kersting, former