There’s a ton of game developers out there on the iPhone. And then, there are a few developers building tools, which help game makers produce more easily.
That’s probably why Scoreloop, a provider of social gaming infrastructure, has caught the attention of the VC’s this year, as today it announces the closing of €2m (approx. $2.8m) from new investor Earlybird and existing investor Target Partners.
Just earlier this year, Scoreloop received a seed investment from Target Partners to get off the ground. This helped the company push out a platform geared towards gaming developers looking to incorporate social elements without the hassle of building their own custom infrastructures for their games.
Scoreloop basically functions when developers incorporate its free SDK. Once these lines of code are added to a game, Scoreloop allows players to find opponents from friends in address books, social networks, and email addresses. During challenges, gamers are awarded virtual points, which they can either win or lose. Additional points can be bought from Scoreloop and the business model is revealed. When these points are bought through whichever game it is, Scoreloop takes a cut of the revenue with its partners/developers who used the platform in their games.
Roland Manger of Earlybird explained, “Scoreloop’s technology and the community platform solve many problems both developers and users are facing in the mobile app-world. Scoreloop will help developers make their games more attractive while improving monetization and users will be able to find games relevant to them much quicker.”
And a key word here is “quick,” since launching in May of this year, Scoreloop said it has 500 registered game developers that have published 40 games making use of its platform.
At the moment though, Scoreloop’s platform only works on the iPhone, and that’s no safe bet with Apple looming above, which could in turn offer similar SDK’s to developers and put Scoreloop right out of business. Thus the company plans to go cross-platform with the funding round. It also plans to focus on international business development with larger publishers and portals.
Keep an eye on Scoreloop’s progression as now it has a hefty chunk of cash to really take off.
