Tango scores a hit with 10M downloads for its Road Riot mobile game

Tango’s Road Riot mobile game has been downloaded more than 10 million times in the past year. The mobile-messaging network’s racing title also has a million daily active players, and it is the No. 1 racing game in the Google Play app store.

That’s a big achievement for one of Tango’s internally produced mobile games, but it’s also important because the accomplishment validates the company’s new publishing model, said Jim Ying, vice president of games publishing for the Mountain View, Calif.-based firm. Tango has a mobile-messaging network with more than 250 million users, and it wants to use that network to make games more viral. The company hopes that games will help it retain people for a longer period of time and monetize its network, which is like a more modern version of text messaging.