Keywords appoints slew of videogame industry veterans to leadership team

Keywords Studios on Tuesday made several appointments to its leadership team, including appointing former Electronic Arts enterprise systems management veteran Igor Efremov as chief commercial officer.

The AIM traded video games industry services provider said that Efremov, who founded Sperasoft, will lead the seven global Service Lines of Keywords as well as the global Business Development team.

Sperasoft, which was acquired by Keywords in December, also provides the company’s new global operations director Mark Rizzo who has previously held senior technology management positions at video games companies such as Electronic Arts, Sony, NCSoft, and Trion Worlds.

Andrew Day, chief executive of Keywords Studios, said: "For me personally, devolving some of the day to day responsibilities to Giacomo and Igor means I can continue to drive our strategic vision, originate M&A opportunities and interface with our employees, clients and investor stakeholders more effectively."

Additionally, Andrew Brown, who has a background in senior marketing positions at Activision Blizzard, Danone, Coca Cola and Johnson & Johnson, has been appointed to the newly created role of chief marketing officer.

The final appointment sees former technical director from games developer and publisher THQ Jamie Campbell join the group as service line director for the engineering services line through the acquisition of d3t.

"These changes and additions to our leadership team at Keywords add capability and capacity as we continue to develop our global video games services platform. Welcoming companies into the Keywords family and integrating them including to the extent of complementing the leadership team with talented individuals from those companies, is something we pride ourselves on and it is pleasing to see this being reflected in these latest people moves," said Day.

As of 1337 BST, Keywords Studios’ shares were up 1.59% at 1,788.00p.