In February 2006, Philippine technology company ePLDT, Inc. announced that it had acquired a majority stake in the live service gaming publisher Level Up! Inc. from its parent company, Level Up! International Holdings Pte. Ltd. This acquisition led to the merger of the operations of the gaming portals netGames (owned by ePLDT) and Level Up!, with the former's branding being dropped in favor of retaining the latter.

ePLDT would become the parent company of Level Up! Inc. until 2011, when the former sold all of its stake back to Level Up! International Holdings.

Level Up! International Holdings Pte. Ltd. (LUIH), a registered Singaporean company, was the parent company of Level Up! Inc. (LUI), a live service gaming publisher in the Philippines. LUI operated the gaming portal Level Up! in the country, and by 2006, was the market leader in the country's live service gaming scene. LUIH owned 100% of LUI.

ePLDT, Inc. was the parent company of netGames Inc., another live service game publisher in the country and a direct competitor to Level Up!. netGames was established in 2004.

On February 16, 2006, ePLDT announced that it had acquired 57.51% ownership of LUI from its parent company, LUIH. ePLDT had planned to merge both netGames and Level Up! to become the dominant market leader in the country. LUIH retained 40% ownership of LUI.^[1]

Then-president and chief executive officer of ePLDT Ray Espinosa stated that the move would combine resources, technical capabilities, marketing, and distribution, and that it was "not motivated by [talk on licensing] the World of Warcraft online game".^[2]

The new merged entity brand was originally planned to be called "Level-Up!-netGames",^[2] however, only the Level Up! branding was retained.

According to the report, it was estimated that Level Up! controlled 80% share of the online gaming market during that time, with netGames having only 10% of the market share. The report predicted that the merger would have resulted in 90% market share,^[3] however, this did not account for the then-startup publisher IP E-Game Ventures, Inc., operator of the E-Games portal, which launched commercially on March 2006. E-Games pioneered the relatively new "free-to-play" business model, which took substantial market share from Level Up!.

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1. Online gaming to post double-digit growth. July 16, 2007. Carla Paras-Sison. Philstar.com. Retrieved on 2025-10-01.
2. ePLDT buys majority stake in Level-Up! Philippines. February 17, 2006 at 11:01 PM. GMA News author. GMA News. Retrieved on 2023-08-29.
3. ePLDT buys 60% of Level Up!. February 18, 2006 at 8:50 PM. GMA News author. GMA News. Retrieved on 2023-08-29.