Wooga Diamond Dash
Wooga and RockYou must be on Cloud Nine right now, having Entourage-style parties on New York rooftops. (At least I would after this news.) The two biggest up-and-coming social game developers, RockYou and Wooga, have signed onto Appatyze, the social games advertisement auction service and cross-application bar invested in by our friend Ian Livingstone. Not to mention that Berlin-based Wooga has reported that it has raised $24 million in capital funding from investors like Highland Capital Partners, Tenaya Capital and more.
Appatyze allows developers to sign up for free (for now), install the cross-application bar into their Facebook game, and promote their own game across colleague's Appatyze bar and vise versa. However, developers sell the ad space above their game to the highest bidder, which creates an open market for trading ad space and increasing value. The advertising dollars exist within the network and grow there, in theory.
As of this writing, Appatyze is allowing all beta testers to receive 100 percent revenue from ad sales, which when the service goes live it will charge an Apple App Store-like fee of 20 percent of all revenue. It's a strategic move by both Wooga, which was recently ranked the fourth-largest social game developer, and RockYou, which signed two Loot Drop games courtesy of John Romero. We'll see soon enough whether Appatyze leads to more money generated in social games outside of the almighty Zynga, and hopefully bring more variety into the space.
[Image Credit: Wooga]
Do you Appatyze is an answer to game discovery and profitability woes on Facebook? Could this be what allows small-time social game developers the financial clout to compete with Zynga?
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