IMVU Hiring, Anticipates $60M Run Rate

By On April 30, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Today IMVU CEO Cary Rosenzweig announced that IMVU would be increasing its workforce from 60 to 90 employees and should hit a $60 million annual run rate by the end of the year, in statements reported byTechCrunch. Right now IMVU is operating a $40 million run rate, nearly double its $22 million run rate from 2009. Rozenzweig credits [...]

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Virtual World Wrap-Up For The Week Of April 30

By On April 30, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Welcome to the Virtual Worlds News Wrap-Up for the week of April 30, 2010. The Wrap-Up is where VWN spotlights stories that we didn't get to cover individually, but still make for interesting reading about the virtual worlds industry. Tweet

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DeNA Reports Record 2009 Revenue

By On April 30, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Today the Japanese social game developer DeNA announced that it had earned $517 million in revenue in 2009, a record high. The company earned $205 million in Q4 alone, an 81% year-over-year increase and a new record for single-quarter earnings.  The company expects its record growth to continue, too. DeNA is projecting Q1 2010 earnings [...]

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Moblyng Partners With Playdom, Raises $2.65M

By On April 30, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Today the social game developer Playdom announced that it would partner with Moblyng to release versions of its top games Mobsters, Sorority Life, and Social City for Android and Palm's webOS. The Android version of Mobsters is currently available. Moblyng also announced that it had raised another $2.65 million from existing investors Mohr Davidow Ventures and [...]

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Icarus Restructures, Drops Some Employees

By On April 30, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Today Icarus Studios announced that the company was restructuring its resources and staff. The company, which has developed both an engine for designing virtual worlds and MMOs as well as its own spinoff title, Fallen Earth, LLC, will be refocusing. According to the announcement, the combined companies will support core members of staff for ongoing [...]

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IMVU Hires SL Vet David Fleck

By On April 30, 2010 · Leave a Comment

This week IMVU announced that it had hired virtual world veteran David Fleck to serve as its new Vice President of Marketing. Fleck served in a similar position at Second Life parent Linden Lab until 2004. Since then he's worked as an independent consultant and as Vice President of Marketing at the 3D game design [...]

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Fast Pay Partners Offers Advances To Social Game Devs

By On April 30, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Payment delays can be a serious problem for social game start-ups, one usually addressed by amassing enough venture capital to survive between checks. This week Fast Pay Partners announced that it was going into business to provide social developers with an alternative to taking investment funds.  What Fast Pay Partners provides is essentially a loan [...]

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Peanut Labs Partners With Nexon

By On April 29, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Today the ad offer network Peanut Labs announced that its survey feature would be integrated into Nexon America's freemium MMO portal. The surveys will be conducted over a three-month period, recruiting teen users from games like Maple Story, Mabinogi, and Combat Arms. Users who accept the surveys will be able to receive virtual currency they [...]

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Treasure Isle Passes Mafia Wars

By On April 29, 2010 · Leave a Comment

This week saw Zynga's four-week-old Treasure Isle game hit the 24.3 million monthly active users mark, according to AppData. This means Treasure Isle has been adding new players at the rate of roughly one million per day. Treasure Isle is now Zynga's fourth-largest game, behind Cafe World, Zynga Poker, and FarmVille.  This makes Treasure Isle [...]

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CrowdStar Files Suit Against Wonderhill

By On April 28, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Today the social game developer Crowdstar filed suit against rival developer Wonderhill, claiming plagiarism. This is rare in social gaming, where developers routinely "clone" each other's hit titles. Regardless, Crowdstar is alleging that Wonderhill's fish care game Aquarium Life bears an excessive resemblance to its own entry in the genre, Happy Aquarium.  Crowdstar's complaint against [...]

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