OpenFeint is the largest mobile social gaming network in the world. OpenFeint’s current headquarters are in Burlingame, California. Moreover, we are the leaders in mobile social gaming as we have created a network for every mobile device and every app store. Currently, we have over 75m register users as well as a presence in more than 5k games. OpenFeint is exclusively provided by The9 in China. The company was established in August 2008 by the current CEO – Jason Citron.
OpenFeint 2.4.6 Release NotesWe at OpenFeint are dedicated to bringing the world closer together with mobile gaming. That is exactly why when GREE approached us to join their family we were very excited. Both companies have big gaming communities and love games, but what truly connects us is the belief we share that the world is a better place when it is connected by mobile games.
From the 21st of April, 2011 and counting we are uniting to create a global gaming ecosystem for hundreds of millions of users. Moreover, while we are expecting excellent new developments to emerge from this magnificent collaboration, we are both still mainly focused on the things that got us here in the first place. GREE will keep growing its network in Japan as well as develop amazing games that showcase the capabilities of their platform. The team at OpenFeint will also continue to grow our network, but our planned upgrades will be accelerated with GREE’s backing. We are currently carrying the same leadership that got us here in the first place.
OpenFeint GameCenter Migration SDK.By choosing us you will be able to discover excellent games, compare achievements and high scores, play with your friends and so much more. The team behind OpenFeint wishes you happy gaming!
History
The first version of OpenFeint was released on the 17th of February, 2009. Iteration 2.0 was launched in June 2009, and it marked the first time a platform was completely free for developers to integrate into their personal applications. One of the people who helped with the engineering was Harris Tsim.
The following version was 2.1, which was released on the 14th of August, 2009. It featured the so-called Social challenges that allowed users to create a task for their friends and themselves to attempt in games. Moreover, it notified the users when the new challenges were available. Another thing it allowed users was to add friends, and it even introduced a brand new user interface.
Iteration 2.4 was launched on the 8th of January, 2010 with a completely revamped layout as well as a standalone OpenFeint application. From the 10th of January 2010, there were more than 900 apps in the Apple App Store which were using OpenFeint. Moreover, there were more than 10 million registered users on the network. On the 15th of September, 2010, the team behind OpenFeint announced that we would start supporting Android.
Back in 2011, OpenFeint was a party to a class action lawsuit. The allegations included invasion of privacy, computer fraud, bad faith, breach of contract, and 7 more statutory violations. A news report stated that OpenFeint’s business plan including disclosing and accessing personal information without authorisation to mobile app developers, as well as advertising web-analytic vendors and networks that market mobile apps. The class action lawsuit was later dismissed.
In April 2011, the Japanese company GREE purchased OpenFeint for $104m. On the 16th of November, 2012 GREE announced that they will discontinue the service on the 14th of December 2012, mainly in favour of the company’s similar platform. You can read more about this at the bottom of the page.
Aurora Feint
This was a mobile game series that was developed by Jason Citron and Danielle Cassley for iOS.
The first game was called Aurora Feint The Beginning, and it was released in the initial wave of App Store apps in July 2008. It was a free single player game that combines the shape manipulation of the old classic Tetris Attack with the character creating aspects of an RPG (role playing game). The second game was called Aurora Feint II: The Beginning, which was released in December 2008. The game adds community and graphical features. Moreover, Aurora Feint II: The Arena was launched in November 2008. It added multiplayer features, and it is billed by the providers as the first casual asynchronous massive multiplayer online game. The latest version of Aurora Feint II was called Tower Puzzles, and it was released in December 2008. The game provides many visual brain teasers that are based on the tower districts on the rest of the titles.
Every version of Aurora Feint was removed from the iOS AppStore on the 14th of July, 2012.
Gameplay
The mechanics of the game are based on Panel de Pon by Nintendo. Moreover, the games in the series have several similarities with the old classic. For example these components: the Store, the Tower, the Smith and the Mine. In the Store, users spend crystals and resources to acquire blueprints as well as magic books. In the Tower, you can complete magic books by solving puzzles within an allowed number of moves; this improves your mining efficiency. In the Smith, gamers complete blueprints by obtaining a specific amount of resources within the permitted time; this gives you access to new kinds of weapons. In the Mine, players can manipulate blocks into combinations of 3 or more to obtain resources and crystals.
The Arena adds an extent of extra capabilities. These include player vs. player duelling, chat in the tavern, more character classes, leaderboards and a news feed. The characters that you created in The Beginning, you can transfer to The Arena.
Plot
The details of the story and the plot are limited. However, there is text in the opening trailer of the game that provides hints. It asks what separates fantasy from reality. And states that a little girl believes that the only way you can survive reality is if you live in her fantasy.
Development
After the release of The Beginning, the developers wrote a post in a forum and stated in an interview that the first version of the game was created in 10 weeks. Not long after its release, there were several reports that circulated privacy concerns about the game’s community traits. A forum post by the creators of the game stated that on the 22nd of July, Apple removed their game from iTunes. The creators responded by saying that the friends list was not stored on their server, so they asked their users for feedback on alternatives and even asked for support to bring back the game on iTunes. On the 24th of July, the App Store began carrying the next version of the game, which was 1.0.0.1. The developers stated that the new version of the game addressed their privacy concerns.
Reception
The Beginning was met with approval that can be compared to the other free games on iTunes. A person reviewed it as the most addictive and fun of the early iPhone games. The Arena was praised for standing apart from the rest of the match three games and its Lord of the Rings aesthetics in a preview release.
OpenFeint connects iOS and Android games
The mobile developer called Aurora Feint just announced a brand new viral game distribution system for the social network OpenFeint. It will eventually allow players to send text messages as well as email invites on both Android and iOS formats.
The company announced that we are already supporting Android, but OpenFeint 2.6 launched only on iOS today. A particular launch date for Android has not been announced yet, but it is expected later during this year, as well the cross-platform support.
OpenFeint is the biggest social gaming community on iOS since we have more than 35 million users as well as a presence in more than 2,600 games. The CEO of Aurora Feint, Jason Citron stated that since Game Centre is just around the corner, and since thousands of games are coming out every year, unique and effective promotion is more crucial than ever.
He added that by developing this out of the network invite system, we will be able to help players give organic game endorsements, and shed light on the top games out there, which will result in more downloads.
There are other features in OpenFeint 2.6 which include a new leaderboard which has time-based geo-location services. There are even safeguards to prevent spamming. This update comes from the funding from our Chinese investor called The9.
An executive chairman of Aurora Feint, Peter Relan stated that a glaring problem with today’s gaming community is that it is very fractured across platforms, and OpenFeint will bridge the gap between players. He added that as we expand across platforms, we will roll out services, which will help friends who use various platforms play against one another.
Game Center does not hurt OpenFeint
Peter Relan, OpenFeint’s boss, has turned down all types of speculation that Apple’s Game Centre launch has impeded the mobile game platform’s success.
OpenFeint’s layer is currently used by 3,800 players. This is a figure which has risen by 119% since the launch of Game Centre. The user base has jumped from 22m to 50m during that time. Relan told VentureBeat that the company is very pleasantly surprised. The market decides the achieving scale, and that is the beauty of it. It is neither you, nor Relan, nor Apple. He added that the rumours of the iOS Game Centre hurting our company are very much exaggerated.
The boss even argued that OpenFeint is on top, rather than Game Centre. Moreover, we provide a direct channel from the user to the developer, which Game Centre does not. In fact, we have something basic for developers, and they do not want to give it up.
Michael Schlade, the CEO of Fishlabs claimed that the social platform is playing a part in making the company’s newest title a success in the App Store. He added that they used OpenFeint and Game Centre’s social features and they managed to push Galaxy on Fire 2 to the top of the grossing charts in iTunes in only a couple of weeks.
OpenFeint and Gaikai are among the top 50 startups
OpenFeint and Gaikai and are only a couple of the game-related organisations that you should keep a watchful eye on, or at least that is what a list of 50 start-up states. It was compiled by Dow Jones for the FASTech conference earlier this week.
Dow Jones’ VentureWire steered a jury to pick 50 new tech companies who show promise through their business practice, successful funding and innovation. OpenFeint and Gaikai are currently the two most prominent game-related companies on the list. However, others featured include Tiny Speck, GoWalla, Foursquare, gWallet and many more.
Screen Digest, the market analysts, predicted that the cloud streaming marking will be worth more than $400m by 2014 if companies like Gaikai overcome the primary obstacles that are involved.
Intel invests $3m in OpenFeint
Aurora Feint is enjoying a pleasant $3m investment from Intel to help them expand the OpenFeint platform. This brings the entire investment in Aurora Feint to $12m, including $5m from The9, the World of Warcraft distributor in China.
OpenFeint is an alternative and recently became a forerunner to the iOS Game Centre, since it now encompasses both Android and iOS devices. It has over 3,400 games as well as over 45m users.
Intel told TechCrunch that OpenFeint is the main interest in the company, which might be some hint as to the processor company’s plans for the mobile market. Intel also invested a massive amount into Gaikai, the cloud streaming company in July.
OpenFeint launched cross-platform social App Program Interfaces
OpenFeint has introduced new cross-platform features. The company-enabled games that are available on iOS, Android and more can now share leaderboards, friend lists, user accounts and even more across many platforms.
The CEO of OpenFeint, Jason Citron stated that we believe that games have to connect people, no matter of what OS or device they have. By releasing OpenFeint Connect, we will give game developers the elasticity they need to take their game data and games as a whole to users everywhere.
This new service is called OpenFeint Connect, and it is not client-based, but API, which means that in theory it can be adopted by games on different platforms with ease. It has already been confirmed that it will support Mac and Windows devices.
OpenFeint launched OpenFeint Connect
The social gaming company OpenFeint launched OpenFeint Connect, which a service that can sync all your accounts, leaderboards, friends as well as achievements across many mobile platforms.
Since the new API launched into a private beta, the developers can now release their games on Windows, iOS, Bada, Android, PC, Mac and more. The best part is that they can sync the users’ data across all of these platforms.
The company has more than 65m of users across all platforms, and the social services are embedded in more than 4,700 games.
OpenFeint service will shut down on the 14th of December; it might disrupt several Android and iOS games
You can either love it or hate it, but OpenFeint was a crucial step for iOS devices. Both the company and Jason Citron singlehandedly pioneered the bringing of something like the Xbox Live experience to iTunes. Before OF, games might have had leaderboards and multiplayer, but nothing was unified. The first couple of versions of the service were a bit rough, but we would not have Game Centre today if it were not for OpenFeint’s popularity.
OpenFeint will discontinue its services on the 14th of December, according to GREE, its current owner. OpenFeint’s closure and network servers might result in service disruptions as well as bad player experience for mobile games that have OpenFeint integration. The company warned that there might be a loss of player data as well.
Download GREE Press Kit Here.A few days ago GREE announced that OpenFeint will be closing on their developer’s site, which is the final push to get the creators of apps to migrate to their OF-enabled software. This includes achievements, screenshots, leaderboards as well as game descriptions. Gree stated in an e-mail to game developers that the migration from OpenFeint to Gree will take less than a week and it depends on the level of integration of OF.
However, it is highly likely that not all Android and iOS developers will be able to update their applications to migrate or remove OpenFeint and re-submit them to iTunes and Google Play by the 14th of December, which may lead to service disruptions with several applications.
OpenFeint launched its platform for iOS back in 2009, as it offered achievements, global leaderboards and social services. These are all features that later were provided by the iOS Game Centre during the same year. OpenFeint was early adopted by the top iPhone apps including Tiny Wings, Pocket God, Fruit Ninja, Jetpack Joyride and many more. These are all games that later on moved to Game Centre. There are many iOS games that still feature integration from OpenFeint, some of these are QWOP, Super Crate Box and Dungeon Raid.
In 2011, Gree acquired OpenFeint for $104m. After that, except for making the OF shareholders a nice chunk of change, the company did not really do much with the service except for Katamari it into their massive user base. During the last year, OF has stagnated, and since similar services silently shut their doors, it is not much of a surprise that GREE removed OpenFeint. Earlier this year Gree announced that it plans to support OpenFeint’s services through Quadrant 3 of 2012 as it created network services for its own platform.
What is surprising here is how people are handling it. A few days ago, game developers were given less than one month notice that the service will shut down. You should keep in mind that even though OF existed, it might not have been that incredible, particularly after Game Cantre picked up the steam. However, it worked, and tonnes of developers still have it implemented in legacy iOS games that leverage the OF services to make potentially vital parts of their games work.
OpenFeint Inc. went out of business on the 14th of December 2012. The company provided mobile social gaming network for Android, iPad and iPhone devices. It was known as Aurora Feint Inc. The organisation was founded in 2008 and was based in Burlingame, California with offices in Tokyo and San Francisco. The company was a subsidiary of GREE International Inc.
See the whole press release in pdf format.Frequently Asked Questions
What is GREE?
GREE is a leading Japanese social networking service, which provides applications at the forefront of mobile tech. Their network is over 25m players across 500 games solely in Japan. Moreover, they have strategic alliances with partners like China’s Tencent as well as Southeast Asia’s Project Goth. GREE are experts in mobile social gaming, ad-network business as well as virtual currency.
Does this mean that now I can launch games on GREE’s network?
We are still finalising plans to assist developers who are interested in moving to new markets, and we will provide additional information as soon as it is possible.
How big was the combined GREE and OpenFeint community?
Together the companies represented a community of over 100m players, which was growing by more than 2.5 users per second.
How will this affect The9?
Our publisher and developer partners who work with The9 to bring content to the Chinese market will not be affected. The Fund9 initiative will not be impacted in any way, and The9 will continue to work with their developers as per usual.
Will your SDK, tools and documentation and SDK be localised into Japanese by GREE?
GREE has their platform, and they will consider what is the best for the Japanese market. You can find more information on their website
But wait, I still have questions!
If you have more questions, you can contact us, and we will be happy to help.
Read our press releases and news about what we do
- 01 September, TuesdayOpenFeint Adds GameFeed To Android And iOS SDK
- 25 August, SundayOpenFeint announced install trade program for developers who implement the new system
- 07 July, SundayOpenFeint’s focus is on free to play games
- 07 June, ThursdayOpenFeint launched GameFeed to foster cross-platform competition for 90m players
- 02 June, SaturdayOpenFeint partnered with Sega to integrate social gaming in Sonic and SEGA All-Stars Racing