Feather Client is under new management.
Today, May 21, the minecraft server operator InPVP announced its acquisition of Feather Client, a prominent third-party Minecraft launcher and client that allows players to use game mods and quality-of-life features like an integrated voice chat.
Instead of purchasing Feather Client’s launcher and technology, InPVP is looking to essentially absorb the company’s user base, which numbers in the millions. As part of the acquisition deal, Feather’s parent company Silentstack will issue an update installing an entirely new launcher across Feather Client users’ devices, with InPVP dubbing the new entity Dawn. InPVP owner Mohamed “PizzaMC” Weheba announced the acquisition at UGCon, a conference for user-generated content creators taking place in Las Vegas today and tomorrow.
“It’s 100 percent a sale of the assets,” Weheba said in an interview with GamesBeat. “Obviously, I’m not buying the company, because I don’t want to be liable for anything that they allegedly have done.”
Feather Client is currently embroiled in a massive controversy sparked by a viral video published by the YouTube creator CalebIsSalty on April 26. In the video, CalebIsSalty alleges that Feather’s launcher has for months loaded and refreshed ads in the background even while minimized or invisible, artificially inflating the company’s ad impressions and revenue to the tune of millions of fraudulent views. Weheba’s careful framing of his company’s acquisition of Feather Client reflects the potential risk InPVP is incurring by acquiring a company mired in such a scandal.
In the weeks since CalebIsSalty published his video, Feather Client has been the focus of intense and growing scrutiny from all corners of the Minecraft and user-generated content space. Weheba told GamesBeat that his interest in acquiring the company was sparked by the controversy, with InPVP viewing Feather Client as ripe for an acquisition and turnaround given its current position. He declined to share his company’s specific valuation of Feather Client, but said the acquisition was a cash deal, and that the company’s previous owners would no longer be involved in the operation, with zero equity in Dawn moving forward.
“There are developers that work on the actual in-game stuff — the performance enhancement and the combat mods — and then there’s the owners, which work more on the ad side of things, and the partnerships and the marketing,” Weheba said. “I do not plan to fire the developers that were working on the in-game stuff.”
Weheba has big plans to expand Dawn’s offerings in the coming year, although he does not anticipate that the client will become profitable in its first 12 months under InPVP management. He plans to reduce the client’s dependence on ad monetization and crank up its focus on direct-to-consumer revenue through sales of cosmetics and other in-game items, implement safety features like a built-in voice chat profanity filter, and partner with the competitive Minecraft organization MCPVP to run tournaments and ranking battles, among other potential expansions.
“Something that [MCPVP] really like is how fast I can move and how committed I am,” Weheba said. “I’ve already pledged $100,000 into tournaments for them this year.”
After the controversy around Feather Client erupted last month, Feather’s ad tech provider Aditude ended its business relationship with the company. Now that the renamed and reformed Dawn client is under new management, Aditude is resuming its relationship with the company, viewing Weheba as “an ideal steward to take the Feather community forward,” per Aditude senior vice president of games Yuriy Yarovoy.
“Given that Mo is rebuilding Dawn from the ground up and using Aditude’s guidance on monetization deployment, we are confident that our standards and practices will be followed accordingly, and that Dawn will be well-positioned as a premium desktop app publisher,” Yarovoy said. “The key is being able to help Dawn design his systems, ad units and formats, and ad business logic from the ground up in order to not only maximize his revenue, but to provide advertisers with valuable Minecraft audiences.”