social game

The Federal Trade Commission granted an approval for video game maker Electronic Arts to purchase PopCap Games.

In a move to better position itself in a competitive social game market EA decided to enter into a deal estimated at up to $1.3 billion to acquire PopCap that owns licenses for such popular video games as "Bejeweled" and "Plants vs. Zombies."

The FTC put the deal on a list of approved transactions. It issues the list several times a week.

Zynga is launching first game in mainland China in association with Tencent Holdings Ltd in a move to grab a share in the $5.8 billion Chinese games market.

An early version of a game called Zynga City will be released by Zynga on Tencents' open platform, Zynga said in a statement on Monday.

It will be a Chinese version of CityVille, Zynga’s most popular game, featuring Chinese architecture, references to Chinese pop culture, as well as events and contests in the game that will be linked to Chinese holidays and news.

A video game publishing leader Electronic Arts Inc announced its plans to acquire PopCap Games for $1.3 billion a move to compete with the social and casual game makers.

EA said it would pay about $650 million in cash and $100 million in common stock upfront for the maker of the popular video games "Bejeweled" and "Plants vs. Zombies." EA could pay up to an additional $550 million if PopCap reaches certain performance targets in about two years.

EA's Chief Financial Officer Eric Brown said the deal would help EA better compete with Zynga.

Saturday night a 20-year old Acton Beale was positioning himself on a balcony railing on the seventh floor of an apartment block when he lost his balance and fell to his death. He was playing stupid but considered as harmless social media game of “planking” which involves a person lying straight, arms by side face down, sans facial expression.

Players of the game are encouraged to pose creative or daring locations and post the feat of Facebook or YouTube.

New stats from a research group eMarketer showed that the social gaming market will likely exceed $1 billion this year generally due to a rising number of users and a projected increase in advertising. It is a 28% growth over the previous year when the market accounted for $856 million.

eMarketer says that about 62 million US users which is 27% of the total Internet subscribers are forecast to play at least one of the social games a month in 2011, up from 53 million last year.

Electronic Arts has entered into a five-year agreement with Facebook to accept Facebook Credits as the exclusive payment method for EA games on the social networking website.

Under the agreement, EA will receive the same 70 percent revenue share for Facebook Credits as is standard for all developers on Facebook.

Pet Society and Restaurant City from Playfish, a division of EA, are two of the most popular games on Facebook in terms of daily users. EA said its soccer and football games are also popular on Facebook.

A provider of monetization solutions for online games PlaySpan entered into an agreement with Ubisoft. The partnership will enable Ubisoft to use PlaySpan’s virtual goods monetization platform for a selection of its online games across multiple platforms worldwide.

In late October the online payments giant PayPal is launching a new pack of developing tools to streamline payment process for social gamers while also attracting new gamers who experience problems when topping up their virtual currency accounts.

According to a new study by The NPD Group 20% of the US population which is 56.8 million Americans have played a game on a social network at one point or another.

Thirty-five percent of those players are new to gaming, having never previously experimented with any form of video game.

Today games like “FarmVille,” “Mafia Wars” and “Happy Aquarium” are as influential for millions of people in this generation as “Pac Man” was in the 1980s.

With the acquisition of Playdom Inc in addition to other companies Walt Disney Co is seeking to become Hollywood's biggest player in the fastest-growing segment of the video game business. According to the sources with the knowledge of the matter the media giant is holding the negotiations with one of the largest makers of online "social" games. The price details were not unveiled but the sources say amounts range from $400 million to $750 million.

 Popular social games like Farmville and Mafia Wars are huge money makers, but Michael Arrington of TechCrunch says a lot of that revenue comes from "completely unethical" advertisements that trick players with false promises of free stuff.