Alawar Entertainment

Sources used are primarily Wikipedia's Alawar Entertainment entry, but also the Alawar and Melesta official web sites.

Alawar Entertainment is originally a Russian video game company that was founded in 1999 to develop and sell PC games, but which in 2001 switched to internet free-to-play 'casual' games. With Alawar's success (and new attracted investment), they purchased several Eastern European video game developers. These video game development companies became internal development houses within Alawar Entertainment, relying on the Alawar Entertainment holding company for development help, publishing, and distribution.

These companies are:

Star Gaze Interactive which became known as Alawar Stargaze in 2007
Dream Dale which became known as Alawar Dreamdale in 2007
Five-BN which became known as Alawar Five-BN in 2008
Friday's Games which became known as Alawar Friday's Games in 2008
Casual Forge Entertainment which became known as Alawar Southpoint in 2010.

Melesta Games was founded in 2007 and is sometimes known as Alawar Melesta when developing games in conjunction with Alawar Entertainment. However the Melesta company remains an independent developer, with its own web site and direction.

Alawar also has a developer Affiliate Program that has linked up with 270 independent developers as of 2015.

Based in Alexandria, Virginia.