PlayerScale
Gaming infrustructure provider
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
PlayerScale, Inc. is a Belmont-based[3][4] gaming infrastructure provider.[4][5] As of 23 May 2013 it operates as a subsidiary of Yahoo!,[2][4] but it is still functioning as a stand-alone business unit.[6] As of 9 April 2016, Games Platform Company ApS acquired Yahoo Games Backend Services.[7]
| Company type | Subsidiary |
|---|---|
| Industry | e-commerce, internet advertising, social gaming |
| Founded | 2009[1][2] |
| Founder | Chris Benjaminsen |
| Headquarters | , |
Key people | Jesper Jensen (CEO)[1] John Vifian (COO)[2] Chris Benjaminsen (CPO)[2] Oliver Pedersen (CTO)[2] |
| Products | Player.IO |
Number of employees | 14 (January 2013)[3] |
| Parent | Yahoo! |
| Website | gamesnet |
Player.IO
PlayerScale's Player.IO is a platform for online games.[4] It works across consoles, the web, PCs, Macs, and on mobile phones.[3] Player.IO is used on a daily basis by an estimated 150 million people worldwide.[1][4] It works with various programming languages, including C++, Java, .NET, Objective-C, HTML5, Unity, Flash, iOS and Android.[3] The platform includes payment processing, online chat, analytics, virtual currencies, distributed caching, authentication, social login, leaderboards, localization, among other things.[8]
Everybody Edits
One of the Player.IO showcase projects was the maze-based platform game Everybody Edits.[9] During his lecture at the 2011 Flash Gaming Summit, PlayerScale chief product officer and Player.IO co-founder Benjaminsen revealed that the game, initially published on Flash game portal Newgrounds, had accumulated around 250 thousand registered users in seven months and was making $10,000 monthly.[10]
In a 2011 review for Jay Is Games, John Bardinelli writes: "Experiments in user-created content can go wildly wrong. With Everybody Edits, it happened to go wildly right. [...] The game as a whole doesn't project an air of refined polish, but the core underneath exhibits a lot of creativity and allows players to unleash their imaginations wild on the world in a simple, entertaining sort of way."[11] Phill Cameron of Rock Paper Shotgun: "I keep coming back to Everybody Edits. I think it's because I'm never alone. Just having other people share in your victories, and more importantly, to lessen your defeats, makes for a compelling experience. You're in this together, for better or for worse, and that forces a level of camaraderie. [...] Regardless, you've got one thing in common; you hate whoever created this meticulously designed Rage Machine."[12]
In March 2019, the game suffered a data breach, exposing 871 thousand unique email addresses, alongside usernames and IP addresses.[13][14] In July 2019, another data breach occurred, leaking 882 unique email addresses, usernames and passwords in plaintext, along with in-game report files.[15] Everybody Edits was eventually shut down on 31 December 2020,[16] the last day Adobe supported its Flash Player.[17]