Research in Motion (RIM) announced today it has acquired Scoreloop, a mobile social gaming company and makers of a cross-platform mobile gaming developer toolkit. The terms of the deal or details as to RIM’s future plans were not disclosed.RIM simply says that it plans to provide tools to the BlackBerry developer community to “take gaming to a new level of social integration.”
What Does Scoreloop Do?
Scoreloop’s focus has been to provide a “one-stop shop” for gaming developers by offering billing and social services for Android, iOS, Windows Phone and Samsung’s bada. Interestingly enough, RIM’s BlackBerry platform was not even supported at the time of acquisition.
The company’s SDK (software development kit) provides features like leaderboards, achievements, social interaction capabilities (for things like challenges between friends), integration with social networking sites, push notifications, personal news channels, virtual currencies and goods, in-app purchases, support for multiple payment options and more.
Scoreloop also helped gamers reach new players by providing cross promotional marketing opportunities within its community, access to a range of industry partners, assistance with pre-installs on carriers and OEM handsets and access to other distribution channels.
In many ways, the company is similar to the more widely known cross-platform offering from OpenFeint, which also provides social features via an SDK, virtual goods and virtual currencies and promotional opportunities to developers.
What Will Happen to Non-BlackBerry Platforms Using Scoreloop?
So what will become of Scoreloop’s cross-platform support, now that’s it’s a part of RIM? In a message posted on the Scoreloop homepage, CEO Marc Gumpinger assures users that the company will continue its cross-platform approach, despite the acquisition. “As a part of RIM,” he says, “we’ll be in the unique position to integrate deeply into BlackBerry platforms to take mobile gaming to the next level together.”
