It appears that a large gaming company called Machine Zone may have  acquired the two letter  MZ.com domain name. The Whois registrant for MZ.com is currently listed as Marksmen, Inc., and the domain name shows a website for Machine Zone. Among other things, Marksmen acquires domain names on behalf of its clients.
In a series of tweet this morning, Jamie Zoch and George Kirikos brought this to my attention. I also noticed a Whois change this morning in my DomainTools Domain Monitor Alert email.
Here are some of the tweets Jamie and George shared this morning:
Premium 2 letter .com domain name MZ(.)com is grabbed for unknown client by Marksmen. @GeorgeKirikos
— Jamie Zoch (@yofie) March 26, 2016
Any predictions on which @MarksmenTweets client wanted the elite 2-letter .com domain name https://t.co/uhylgKK5XM? I’m stumped. @yofie
— George Kirikos (@GeorgeKirikos) March 26, 2016
https://t.co/uhylgKK5XM is now loading for Machine Zone!
— George Kirikos (@GeorgeKirikos) March 26, 2016
According to its LinkedIn page, Machine Zone has been quite successful: “Machine Zone is a global leader in free-to-play mobile gaming, leveraging its proprietary technology to create real-time, truly immersive social games.” Some of the company’s popular games include Game of War, iMob2, Original Gangstaz, and Global War. The company states that its games “have been downloaded and played by over 130 million people worldwide.” The privately held company was founded in 2008.
The company has been using MachineZone.com for its website and MZ.com also now loads its website as well. I wonder if the company plans to use these domain names separately or if they will end up forwarding one domain name to the other.
Although this appears to be a private sale and the price of MZ.com probably won’t be publicly announced, George reported what he believes was a recent asking price for the domain name:
Asking price of https://t.co/uhylgKK5XM was $3.25MM 6 weeks ago, according to @DomainTools screenshot, well within their financial means.
— George Kirikos (@GeorgeKirikos) March 26, 2016
I wonder if this add’s any value to the coresponding nTLD?
Machine.Zone points to a SEDO page and accepting offers of $1 – that was my bid 🙂
Never used Sedo.com before but would have thought there would be a bidding minimal limit?
It seems they also have stopped using their @machinezone Twitter handle. Maybe they move that to @mz as well to match EA´s @ea handle.