After Playfish, social-game veterans return with Samurai Siege, earning $50K a day

John Earner and his team of happy Londoners scored big in the first generation of social games. Now, they’re back with a new startup, Space Ape Games, and a hit title Samurai Siege, which is generating $50,000 a day in revenue from more than 200,000 daily players after just nine days on the market.

Earner led Playfish’s London studio and created hit after hit for the company. That led to EA buying the developer for at least $300 million in 2009. Under EA, the Playfish team released games such as The Sims Social. But as Facebook titles took a dive, their mojo dissipated. The “Playfish Mafia,” reminiscent of the Paypal Mafia that founded many Silicon Valley startups, left EA and then started Space Ape Games in London last year with a dozen Playfish veterans. The group wanted to create the world’s best mobile-strategy-game company.