Firy, owner of Skillz and other game brands, said it has completed the sale of its entire equity stake in Exit Games for $55 million.
The stake was 10.5% of Exit Games’ outstanding share capital. Now Exit Games, which Skillz bought for $50 million back in 2021, is now independent again. The transaction closed on Friday, October 2, 2026, and Firy received the proceeds in full.
“Exit Games’ management has built a great business around Photon, and we are rooting for
them,” said Andrew Paradise, CEO and Founder of Firy, in a statement. “We invested in Exit Games in 2021, at what turned out to be the height of the venture market over the last decade. Five years later, the average 2021-vintage fund has distributed five cents on the dollar, and most of that vintage is still sitting in illiquid marks. We are exiting in cash and above our purchase price. Cash back on the balance sheet gives Firy optionality in our other endeavors.”
The sale represents a fully realized cash return of approximately 1.1x Firy’s original investment, which was made in August 2021 near the peak of private technology valuations, according to Pitchbook. By comparison, 2021-vintage U.S. venture capital funds had distributed an average of 0.05 times of paid-in capital at their five-year mark, the lowest of any vintage after five years since 1997.
Firy’s realized return is approximately 22 times that average. Firy acquired its minority stake in Exit Games, the Hamburg-based developer of the Photon multiplayer networking technology, for a purchase price of $50 million in August 2021 under an agreement entered into by the company under its former name, Skillz.
Firy’s sale of its 10.5% stake for $55 million values Exit Games at a valuation of $523.8 million, based on the latest pricing.
“We sold our entire stake back to them,” Paradise said in an interview with GamesBeat. “They’ve cleanly exited our investment.”
Paradise said the business performed nicely and it turns out that this investment was better than many, considering the average venture fund in games returned around five cents on the dollar.
“When the average venture fund is making making five cents on the dollar in DPI (distributed to paid-in capital), and we’re doing 22 times that, we think it’s a good day,” Paradise said.
Firy is a global holding company built to fuel business potential. Through its growing portfolio,
including Skillz, RZR, and Beamable, Firy operates at the intersection of content, identity,
commerce, and performance marketing. By leveraging first-party data, enterprise-scale infrastructure, and scalable operating systems, Firy enables scalable growth while maintaining
a disciplined focus on capital efficiency and long-term value creation.
Exit Games GmbH, based in Hamburg, Germany, develops Photon, the multiplayer networking
technology behind thousands of games across all major engines and platforms, including global hits such as Stumble Guys. Founder-owned and self-funded, Exit Games is on a mission to make Photon the standard for multiplayer.
“One of the things that’s happened in the sector is liquidity in gaming has been very scarce. Venture capitalists rotated away from gaming content. The number of deals or dollars going into deals has actually been falling pretty substantially, and so I think getting a full cash exit in this market is pretty uncommon,” Paradise said. “It’s a really good result for us and for them. This gives them back full control of their business, and it provides us with a sizable cash injection into our balance sheet.”
Paradise said Firy is still a fan of the Exit Games business, which is built around Photon, which enables multiplayer gaming. Skillz, the multiplayer gaming site where you can play against others in one-on-one matches in games of skill, uses Photon’s infrastructure.
Firy is a holding company that owns Skillz. It also owns Beamable, a business-to-business (B2B) a live-operations service for game companies and RZR, a game monetization firm which helps developers acquire players or retarget them or reacquire them.
“Thematically, it’s much easier for the market to understand Firy as a set of companies, whereas our branding (previously) made the investor community think that Skillz was the entire business. We’ve had seen tremendous growth in RZR over the last couple of years,” Paradise said.
There’s no specific use for the proceeds of today’s deal. As for its progress on the legal front, Skillz won a $719 million judgment in July against Papaya Gaming, a competitor that created bots to play against human players in matches that were supposed to be human-vs-human. The judgment was the largest false advertising award in history.
Papaya Gaming has since filed for bankruptcy protection in both Delaware and Israel, and it is proposing a payment plan for addressing the judgment. Avia Games is also in the midst of paying an $80 million settlement to Skillz for a similar lawsuit with patent infringement claims.
[Updated: 10/6/2026 at 7:35 a.m. Pacific with debt payoff information]
Firy announced it is paying off its remaining $49.7 million in principal owed on its outstanding 10.25% Secured Notes. This will pay off the company’s debt. The transaction is expected to save Firy about $3.6 million in cash interest that otherwise would have accrued through December 15 maturity date.
“The December 15 debt wall is coming down,” said Paradise, in a statement. “This redemption completes the retirement of our $300 million notes ahead of their maturity, with no new capital raised and no shareholder dilution. We believe we have the capital to run and grow our businesses and fund our litigation if necessary. Going forward, we expect to use debt when we believe it can enhance equity returns. The next chapter is about what we build from here.”
“Retiring the Notes is another step in our 100-year journey,” added Alex Walsh, CFO of Firy, in a statement. “We expect to enter 2027 without outstanding borrowed debt and with greater flexibility. Without debt service, more cash will be available to invest in the businesses as we focus on growing revenue and AEBITDA, supporting our guidance of modest positive operating cash flow in 2027 and revenue more than doubling from 2025 to 2028. We will consider debt in the future when we believe it enhances equity returns.”