What I don’t know is how I found out that there exist extensions for iOS that let you code for the notification center,” De Cabo recalls. “I never made a game before and I decided to do one in a weekend to see if I’d be able to make a game within two days. That was before it took on a viral life of its own, and got featured in the App Store (in part thanks to another shareholder, marketeer Chris Obereder, who had a 10 percent stake, with De Cabo owning the remaining 75 per cent). In a call, De Cabo told me he was first introduced to Genera by his then boss at Icinetic, Lucas Gozálvez (who also owned a 15 per cent stake in ‘Steve – The Jumping Dinosaur’) but at first the gaming company wasn’t interested in making an acquisition.

He’s also joined Genera Games where he’ll be heading up a team at the company developing “ultra casual” titles. However, TechCrunch has learned that ‘Steve – The Jumping Dinosaur’ has since been acquired by a different suitor, Spanish gaming company Genera Games, for a sum I understand to be more than triple the offer De Cabo originally received.

This then led to an acquisition offer that went up and up - from an initial $350 to $60,000, De Cabo told TechCrunch at the time - that was politely declined. The game become a minor viral sensation, shooting it up the App Store charts, eventually catching the attention of Apple itself who featured the ‘app’. When Iván De Cabo hacked together ‘ Steve – The Jumping Dinosaur‘, the super casual game playable from within the iOS Notification Center, he had no idea what would happen next.

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