As the Facebook game industry shifts toward Facebook’s Facebook Credits virtual currency ahead of the July 1 deadline, Live Gamer is making itself useful in helping with the transition. New York-based Live Gamer is announcing today that it will handle Facebook Credits on an exclusive basis for Sid Meier’s Civilization World, one of the most anticipated social games of the season.
Take-Two Interactive, which is publishing the Civilization World game this summer, will use Live Gamer to power the virtual goods transactions and manage the virtual economy in the social game, which will be free-to-play. That is, gamers can play it for free but pay real money for virtual goods in small transactions. The 2K label of Take-Two will use Live Gamer Elements to handle everything from analytics to integration with Facebook Credits for payments. I’m in the midst of trying out Civilization World now in a closed beta and am very curious whether it will be appealing to Civilization’s fans, who have bought more than 10 million games over the years.
It will be interesting to watch how the entire Facebook game industry migrates from a splintering of various virtual currencies to Facebook Credits, the social network’s new universal currency for digital goods purchases. Live Gamer has a wide range of clients — from Electronic Arts to THQ — with more than 90 million users in 23 countries. Facebook is making Credits mandatory.