Facebook cracks down on offer providers

It looks like the ban hammer has hit its mark on two of the biggest in-game offer providers on Facebook: Gambit and Tatto Media. Earlier in the month Facebook announced that it had shut down in-game offer providers for some shady and misleading offers, but didn’t name names. This week the social network did. Both Gambit and Tatto Media have been accused of serving up offers in games that have hidden obligations or fees. The reason for the bans, according to an excellent report on VentureBeat, was ” repeat violations of Facebook’s guidelines for offers.”

If you take into account that 30 percent of revenues in the $1 billion virtual goods business are derived from such offers, then this is a very serious matter that needs to be addressed now, because it shows a weakness in that business model. Game providers like Zynga, Playfish and others have started cracking down on these kinds of dubious offers as well - though Facebook has certainly done its fair share of forcing these companies to do the right thing.

Ultimately in-game offers need to be re-thought and refreshed so that users aren’t roped into products and services without knowing what all of the details are. Some examples of this might include a service that doesn’t tell you until it is too late that you have signed up for a lengthy and expensive subscription, or a product that is mailed to you unsolicited with a questionable amount of time to return. At the end of the day players have to ask themselves if the virtual currency they might earn by participating in an offer is really worth the risk and ultimate costs (goods and services they didn’t know they purchased).

You can learn more by checking out this excellent VentureBeat article on the topic.

Green Lantern game rumored

According to a report on VentureBeat, citing several undisclosed sources, a Green Lantern video game is in the works and is believed to be linked to the Green Lantern film from Casino Royale and Goldeneye director Martin Campbell. According to this report, the game will be developed by Double Helix, who most recently worked on the G.I. Joe movie tie-in games and Silent Hill Homecoming.

Of course, it doesn’t make a lot of sense if it is true, considering that Warner Bros. owns Snowblind Studios, who made the wonderful Justice League Heroes games for PS2, PSP and Xbox. Both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of the game are in the works, says VentureBeat.

Meanwhile, Warner Bros is not talking about this story, saying only that it does not comment on rumor and speculation.

LOGIN 2009 Speakers

Evergreen Events has released the official schedule for the 2009 LOGIN Conference, a week-long event dedicated to the business of online gaming - from multiplayer technology to MMOs and all stops in between. Looking through the speakers list on the conference’s official site, there’s a lot of familar names and companies attending including my former colleague from GameSpy Todd “Tungsten” Northcutt (consider that and official shout out, Todd). The annual event takes place in Seattle, Washington May 11 - 14 at the Seattle Marriott Waterfront Hotel.

So who will be at LOGIN? Robin Walker from Valve Software, and reps from such companies as Xbox 360, Atlus Online, Turbine Entertainment, Sony Online Entertainment, Simutronics, Netdevil, Near Death Studios, 38 Studios, VentureBeat, Bohle Company, Funcom, Divide By Zero, GamerDNA, GGL Global Gaming, Wonacott Communications, Gazillion Entertainment, Flying Lab Software, Cryptic, THQ, Big Fish Games and on and on. Over 85 speakers are expected to attend to give speeches, partake in panels and interact in over 60 sessions across three and a half days.

For more information on LOGIN, hit the link above.

GamesBeat Who’s Got Game? Finalists

VentureBeat passed along the names of the finalists for the Who’s Got Game? startup competition at the GamesBeat 09 game conference. To get to this point, nominees has to make it past a group of judges, who reviewed applications from more than 50 video game and virtual world startups before deciding upon seven finalists. Those seven finalists will be allowed to present their unique company brands and strategies to GamesBeat attendees.

The panel of judges included VentureBeat’s Dean Takahashi; Ed Fries, CEO of Figure Prints and former head of Microsoft Game Studios; Kevin Bachus, co-founder of Microsoft’s Xbox; James Cham, associate partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, Eric Goldberg, head of Crossover Technologies; and Jay Eum, managing director at TransLink Capital.

So who are these companies? You can find out more after the break:

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GamesBeat 2009 Speakers Announced

VentureBeat today announced the speaker line-up for this year’s GamesBeat Conference. GamesBeat 2009 is the inaugural year for the conference and is the only gathering focused entirely on the business of games. Top speakers on this year’s schedule include Sony Online Entertainment’s President, John Smedley, 38 Studios founder and Major League Baseball All-Star Pitcher Curt Schilling, Creative Artists Agency game head Seamus Blakely, Bing Gordon of leading venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Crispy Gamer co-founder John Keefer. The conference takes place on March 24, 2009 at the Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco. A full list of speakers can be found after the break.

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Amazon’s Casual Controversy

There’s no nice way to say it: casual game publishers and developers doing business with Amazon.com are a little bit pissed off. The frustration is over a promotion that is selling casual games from various publishers for $9.99 each. At the Casual Connect Conference this week in Hamburg, Germany, many publishers voiced their disdain at the price point, and some pulled their products from amazon.com.

The company purchased casual games portal Reflexive back in October of 2008, so no one was surprised when it decided to launch its own casual games program portal site wide. What they were surprised about was that some of their games - many of which are priced much higher than $10, could sell for less than they price-point they have set.

Casual game developers are of the mindset that once the price is down it stays down and it also makes it harder to sell games at retailers like Wal-Mart when consumers can pick up the same product online for half the price. Somme developers, like PopCap Games and iWin, have gone so far as to pull their products from Amazon’s online catalog.

While casual games portals have been around for awhile this is new ground for the big players like Amazon and Apple. Casual game creators want in on the action but they expect these new spaces to be fair to them.

Source: VentureBeat