Archive for August, 2009

1. Scoreloop secures €2 million funding to develop its iPhone social and analytics tools

   August 18, 2009

   Scoreloop, which bills itself as the “technology leader in mobile social gaming” has secured €2.0m ($2.8m, £1.7m) in further investment. I spoke to CEO Marc Gumpinger about how Scoreloop aims to help iPhone developers grow their business. Any developer building an iPhone App needs to be answering the questions: “How can I get new players [...]

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   Posted in: Finance

   Tagged with: analytics, earlybird, investment, iphone, scoreloop, target partners

   3 Comments

2. If QuakeLive can’t survive on advertising alone, who can?

   August 17, 2009

   John Carmack has announced that in-game advertising was not remunerative enough to support id software’s web-based version of Quake and a premium service is on the way. Does this mean that the days are numbered for high-quality free web-games? Quake Live launched in February 2009. Admittedly, it was based on an old game, but it [...]

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   Posted in: Featured, Sales

   Tagged with: advertising, browser games, id Software, iga worldwide, quake live, starred

   5 Comments

3. Grin closes its doors

   August 13, 2009

   Swedish developer Grin has gone bust. On its website, the company ascribed its woes to “too many publishers [which] have been delaying their payments, causing an unbearable cashflow situation.” Grin is best known for Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter and Bionic Commando. Grin is believed to have had over 200 staff before it laid off approximately 50% [...]

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   Posted in: Game Over Zone

   Tagged with: closures, job loss tracker, redundancies

   No Comments

4. Where has all the VC money gone?

   August 6, 2009

   Are we really seeing a dearth of venture capital money? There’s still plenty of venture capital firms around, but why aren’t they spending? Most VC funds have a seven-ten year cycle. They raise money from limited partners, invest in high-growth business, hopefully exit some of those for a good return, and start returning money to [...]

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   Posted in: Featured, Finance

   Tagged with: investment, starred, venture capital

   3 Comments