Engage Digital Wrap-Up For The Week Of April 16, 2011

By On April 16, 2011 · Leave a Comment

Welcome to the Engage Digital Wrap-Up for the week of April 16, 2011. The Wrap-Up is where Engage Digital spotlights stories that we didn’t get to cover individually, but still make for interesting reading about the business of user engagement.

Android Snags Sprint For Direct Carrier Billing. Now Verizon’s The Only Major U.S. Carrier Left: Sprint joins T-Mobile and AT&T as carriers that allow consumers to charge purchases made in the Android Market directly to their phone bills.
Anna Hazare Inspires Social Gamers For Social Good In India: Indians inspired by the latest hunger fast of social activist Anna Hazare are flocking to socially conscious social games available on the Ibido social network.
Apple Hit With Class Action Lawsuit Over Minors’ Purchase Of In-App Goods: Apple is now the subject of a class-action lawsuit, alleging the company is unfairly profiting by selling in-app transactions to minors without parental approval. The suit is filed by Garen Meguerian, who alleges that his daughter spent over $200 in freemium games like Zombie Cafe and City Story without his knowledge. The complaint refers to selling cash-based virtual currencies in freemium games as a “bait-and-switch” business model.
Auckland IT Scene: Virtual Game, Real World Success: A local newspaper profiles Outsmart, creators of the SmallWorlds virtual world for kids that serves over 6.5 million registered users. Outsmart says SmallWorlds is growing by about 50,000 users per week.
Global Agenda Is Now Free-To-Play: Global Agenda is now officially free-to-play with the launch of its version 1.4 update, called Free Agent.
Gourmet Ranch Goes Fishing With New Expansion: Playlogic’s Gourmet Ranch has added an expansion to the game that introduces fishing and seafood-themed recipes.
Hello Kitty Online Donates $6 Million To Japanese Earthquake Relief Fund: Players of Sanrio Digital’s Hello Kitty Online raised $6000 for Japan’s Project KIBOW, an organization that funds Japan’s Civic Force, which hands out food and supplies. The money wasn’t raised by purchased of charity virtual goods. Instead players were asked to participate in in-game events, with player participation dictating how much money Sanrio Digital would donate.
How Did Social Web Browser Flock Lose Its Friends?: The social Web browser Flock will see key features go offline on April 26, just a few months after it was acquired by Zynga. The browser will continue to function, but will no longer be updated and will grow less secure over time.
Mythos European Open Beta Starts Today: Current developer HanbitSoft and publisher Frogster sent the hack-and-slash MMO Mythos into open beta in Europe this week. Users can download the game for free or purchase a version at retail that comes bundled with virtual goods.
New AR Shirt Makes For Chest-Bursting Fun: Level-Up is selling a T-Shirt that will act as an AR market for playing 3DS augmented reality games.
Planet Moon’s Ex-CEO Aaron Loeb Joins Playfish: Former Planet Moon CEO Aaron Loeb is joining Playfish as the new General Manager of its San Francisco office.
Playdom Pushes Its Own Game Portal: Playdom has opened its own game portal that lets users play the games completely independent of Facebook. Most notably, the versions of games appearing on Playdom’s portal do not include Facebook Credits.
Rio The Movie Invades FarmVille: This week FarmVille launched a special themed farm to promote the film Rio, which opened on April 15th. Users who visit the farm and help Rio in a question can receive two free exclusive virtual items.
Rovio Revenue 14M€ In Q1/2011: A Finnish newspaper has reported that Rovio generated over $20 million in revenue during the first quarter of 2011.
Wooga Hits 20M Users, Fourth Biggest Facebook Game Dev: Social game developer Wooga has passed 20 million users, making it the fourth-largest developer on Facebook.
You Can Buy SWTOR Gold/Credits Now: Even though BioWare and EA’s subscription-based MMORPG isn’t scheduled to launch until this September, gold farmers are already selling the game’s virtual currency at a rate of 1000 credits for approximately $1061.13 (£650).
Yslandia Hits Player Milestone, Goes Free-To-Play: The iOS MMORPG Yslandia has gone free-to-play to celebrate the acquisition of its 100,000th player.
Zoo Story: New Social Game Coming To iOS: TeamLava is launching a new freemium game on iOS, Zoo Story, to complement its Fashion Story and Nightclub Story games.
Zynga Says No To Ads, Yes To In-Game Promotions: Zynga refuses to run ads in any of its games, but will run branded in-game promotions. The idea is that the in-game promotions are less intrusive and offer features, like virtual goods, that users will want to engage. The promotions can be built in as little as six weeks.