PlayerScale‘s business isn’t sexy. But its backend services for game developers is proving to be popular. Today, the company announced that its platform is in use in more than 4,000 games, with a total of 100 million players.
The Belmont, Calif.-based company makes it easier for 2,600 game developers to integrate functions such as payment systems, multiplayer, in-game chat, data management, and networking across platforms. Jesper Jensen, its chief executive, said PlayerScale’s platform works across consoles, the web, PCs, Mac, and mobile games. Developers can focus on creative work while PlayerScale offloads the dull but important infrastructure tasks.
Customers include SGN, Con Artist Games, and 505 Games.
“We’re a white-label product that sits behind a lot of web-based and mobile games,” Jensen said. “Most users don’t know us.”
PlayerScale operates a software-as-a-service for everything that players connect to for the services that are in common for many games. It works with Flash, iOS, Unity, C++, Java, .Net, Objective-C, HTML5, Android, and other programming languages. PlayerScale charges based on the success of its customers. It has a variety of business models, including subscription, a la carte, or license fees.
“We interconnect all of that with a unified backend, so you can play across platforms,” Jensen said. “We served the long tail in the past and are now moving up and getting involved with much larger brand names.”
A lot of the competition in gaming right now is in-house operations. Others include Gree and DeNA, which provide backend services, but PlayerScale does not offer the publishing services those companies do. The company was founded in 2011 and is self-funded and cash-flow positive. PlayerScale has 14 employees.
Originally, PlayerScale was previously a social gaming portal that existed before Facebook took off.
