SANTA MONICA, Calif. & SHANGHAI--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Xfire™, a feature-rich online community platform that transports gamers’ social networks into thousands of PC games, is expanding its core services on a global scale. Xfire is amplifying its presence in the games space through multiple new publishing deals with gaming industry innovators, including CJ Internet, Funcom, Neowiz, Origin PC, SEA Gaming, Twitch.tv and Wicked Interactive. In China, Xfire has partnered with the China Youth Internet Association (CYIA, under administration of the China Youth League) and youth.cn to jointly promote the “Green Games” initiative, which addresses concerns about health and social problems associated with young online gamers. Pressing on globally, Xfire is working to bring its services to a wide range of emerging online games markets in non-English speaking territories with localized versions of the Xfire in-game social tools.
“Xfire is entering a rapid growth phase,” said Malcolm CasSelle, CEO, Xfire. “We will build upon our expanded relationships and global reach to continue to improve the gamer experience and drive new user adoption.”
Publishing Deals
As one of the largest social communities for online gamers, Xfire is constantly adding support for new and existing games. To help facilitate this, Xfire is now working with the following publishers/games to include the Xfire App as part of the game client download:
- CJ Internet – S2 and Uncharted Waters
- Funcom – Secret World
- Neowiz – Seven Souls Online
- SEA Gaming – World of Tanks (Southeast Asia territories)
- Wicked Interactive – Mission Against Terror (M.A.T.)
Beyond partnering with game publishers, Xfire also has unique deals in place with Origin PC and Twitch.tv. The Xfire App will be pre-installed on every Origin notebook and desktop computer, and is central to the 24/7 customer support tool, Origin Nexus. The Twitch.tv partnership centers on the cross-promotion of live-streaming services for online games.
Green Games
Xfire, as a partner with the China Youth Internet Association (CYIA, under administration of the China Youth League), is promoting the concept of “Green Games” to protect the physical and mental health of China’s young online gamers. The CYIA is the first network organization dedicated to promoting healthy lifestyles both on and off the internet. The Green Games initiative focuses on assessing games in order to prevent game addiction or over-exposure of mature themes to children and young adults. Xfire, together with the CYIA, aims to grow the movement with involvement from gamers, publishers and developers.
Global Partners
An important facet of Xfire’s efforts to become a global entity is establishing a presence in emerging online games markets. Xfire is actively engaging with partners in growing non-English speaking territories, including: Brazil, Germany, Korea, Poland, Russia, Southeast Asia, Taiwan and Turkey. Xfire is tapping these partners for native language support in day-to-day operations, including community management, user acquisition, ad sales and third-party partnerships.
These new Xfire initiatives come on the heels of the $3 million in funding Xfire received earlier this year from IDM Venture Capital. Xfire continues to expand its services in both emerging and existing online games markets to deliver a more connected gaming experience to gamers and partners.
About Xfire
Xfire™ provides the ultimate social experience for gamers by allowing players to chat and talk with groups of friends directly in-game across more than 2,300 titles and on multiple chat services like Facebook Chat, Yahoo!, AIM and Google Chat. Xfire also allows players to capture and share in-game media like videos, screen shots and live game broadcasts. It works regardless of game type, server browser, or gaming service that a player is using. Xfire eliminates the hassles of running multiple programs like IRC, instant messengers, Skype, or in-game friend lists to keep track of when and where a gamer's friends are playing. Over $40 million has been invested in Xfire’s technology and the company has over 21 million users. Xfire is headquartered in Santa Monica, California. You can download the Xfire app from www.xfire.com.