Social and mobile gaming firm 6L (formerly 6waves Lolapps) is laying off its in-house game development staff to focus its business exclusively on publishing partnerships with independent developers.
6L--formed by the mid-2011 merger of social gaming startups 6waves and Lolapps--said it will restructure its business to concentrate on efforts like developer outreach, product advisory and user growth initiatives as well as its publishing platform. 6L social titles like Ravenskye City, Give Hearts and Ravenwood Fair attract about 11.2 million users a month via Facebook; a 6L spokesperson told Inside Social Games the Ravenwood Fair franchise will continue to operate under an external team, while the Escalation Studios and Smartron5 units will continue to work on mobile games and titles targeting the Chinese market, respectively.
Last autumn, 6L launched the 6L Fund, a $10 million initiative to fuel innovation in mobile and social gaming development. In addition to financial support, the 6L Fund offers developers access to the company's suite of publishing services and developer tools, including cross-promotion, funded user acquisition, product management, localization and hosting efforts. Developers also enjoy access to the Flash-based Fliso Game Engine, which enables the creation of 3D gaming environments.
Earlier this month, 6L signed partnerships with 16 new independent mobile developers including U.S. firms Harebrained Schemes, Playviews/Xigantic, Shiny Shoe, Sixits and xKey Media alongside studios from Canada, China, Colombia, Hong Kong, Japan, Pakistan, Russia and Ukraine. The terms of 6L's new mobile publishing agreements guarantee a $100,000 marketing budget for each qualified title within two months of launch--if 6L does not fulfill its obligations, the publisher will relinquish the game back to the developer, also handing over users and future revenues. Details of game launch schedules were not announced.
For more:
- read this Inside Social Games article
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