Social Gaming Roundup: Big Fish, EA, Scoreloop, & More

Big Fish Games Expands Global Reach -- Earlier this week, Big Fish Games announced that it is expanding its "direct-to-consumer reach" by launching five localized game portals in Brazilian Portuguese, Danish, Dutch, Italian, and Swedish. Additionally, the company is now accepting payments in 16 new currencies; the Argentine peso, Australian dollar, Brazilian real, British pound, Canadian dollar, Danish krone, euro, Japanese yen, Mexican peso, New Zealand dollar, Norwegian kroner, South African rand, Singapore dollar, Swedish krona, Swiss franc, and US dollar. EA Sports to Bring PGA Tour to Facebook -- It looks like EA Sports PGA Tour will be the next Electronic Arts franchise to make its way to Facebook, according to an announcement earlier this week. Unlike the previous titles, such as Madden NFL and FIFA Superstars, PGA Tour Golf Challenge will feature skill-based, real-time game play rather than asynchronous team management. OpenFeint Grows Despite Game Center -- Though some expected OpenFeint, a mobile social games network, to decline after the release of Apple's Game Center platform, VentureBeat reports the opposite. Since the release of Game Center, OpenFeint has actually doubled its user base to around 50 million users, with the number of OpenFeint-enabled games up 119%. Scoreloop Breaches 3 Million New Users a Month -- Along with the release of Scoreloop's 2.0 SDK for Android, the mobile, social games platform is now gaining more than 3 million new users each month. Unlike OpenFeint, Scoreloop says that most of its growth stems from the Android and cross-platform gaming. GameGround Raises $5.3 Million -- GameGround, a developer of a "personalized gaming app" of the same name, raised $5.3 million in a Series B round this week. Among the participants were Sequoia Capital, Softbank Capital, Vodafone Ventures, and Novel TMT Ventures. Zattikka Acquires Monty Python License -- Already with $5.5 million in funding and still raising more, the UK-based social gaming company Zattikka has acquired the license for Monty Python's Flying Circus. According to Worlds In Motion, their first release will be a Facebook title that will "pay homage" to the 1970s sketch comedy program. Zynga to No Longer Take Cut of Charity Donations -- From the Gulf spill to Haiti, Zynga has set up special virtual goods to help raise money in the past but have been heavily criticized for taking up to 50% of the revenue. Following criticism, Zynga will no longer take any cut from their charitable efforts, according to TechCrunch. Additionally, Zynga has also noted that it will begin a new campaign in December with FarmVille for the UCSF Children's Hospital Challenge for Charity.

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Social Gaming Roundup: Big Fish, EA, Scoreloop, & More

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