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Miniclip Announces Evolution of Web Gaming Platform After 21 Years as it Deepens Focus on Mobile

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Miniclip, a global leader in digital games, is celebrating its 21st anniversary and the evolution of the Miniclip.com this summer. The iconic game developer and publisher will continue its focus on bigger and better mobile first experiences for its global audience, while fan favourites 8 Ball Pool and Agar.io will continue to be accessible for web players.

Miniclip.com, which will continue in its current format until summer 2022, has been an important part of Miniclip’s legacy and laid the foundation for the company to grow into the influential position it finds itself in today, with a global audience of 250 million mobile monthly active users.

Launched by President and Co-Founder Rob Small and Tihan Presbie in 2001, the site first hosted a single title, Dancing Bush, programmed by the duo in their apartment. During its time, Miniclip.com has hit many industry defining milestones, such as:

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  • Dancing Bush became one of the first viral interactive game hits and is one of the most successful and longest running viral game campaigns of all time.
  • com was the originator of the mass free rich media content syndication model, with no paid advertising, instead bringing players in purely through word of mouth.
  • com became the #1 online games website in 2005, with more users than any other domain in the world.

In the following years the site grew into a thriving international community and a beloved home for a wide variety of content, from games to animation. Following changes to Miniclip.com in the summer, the website will become a destination for potential partners, prospective candidates and other business interests to access news and information about the brand.

Miniclip’s mobile focus began in 2010, with the company quickly finding a large audience for its wide variety of titles. In the following years, Miniclip’s growth has continued rapidly, tripling revenues over the last three years. To strengthen development capacity, this year saw the expansion of operations in Portugal with a brand-new studio.

In March 2022, Miniclip announced that it had surpassed a cumulative total of over 4 billion downloads across a catalogue of games that include Agar.io, Soccer Stars, and 8 Ball Pool. 8 Ball Pool was recently announced to have hit a milestone of 1 billion downloads and holds the Guinness World Records title for the “most downloaded mobile pool game”. Both 8 Ball Pool and Agar.io will still be available to online players following the new direction for the site.

Now an industry leader publishing and developing their games for mobile, Miniclip has completed multiple key acquisitions to extend their portfolio and help talented studios release chart topping titles. Puzzling.com, Green Horse Games, and GameBasics, the most recent newcomers to the ever-expanding Miniclip Group, have seen continued growth across their games while working cooperatively and with support from Miniclip’s considerable industry expertise.

To share the legacy of Miniclip.com and thank the players that made the company a success, Miniclip has planned celebrations over the next few months, with more details to be announced soon.

Robert Small, President and Co-Founder at Miniclip, said: “Miniclip has been such an important part of my life, from the early days of frantic development on Dancing Bush to the global company it is today. It’s impossible to sum up the pride and gratitude I feel seeing how much we have grown since our humble start. Under the fresh leadership of Saad as CEO, Miniclip has an even brighter future ahead of it as we maintain our mobile focus, and our players around the world will have so much to look forward to.”

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Bitcoin

Bitcoin Miner celebrates two years of hugely successful collaboration with ZBD

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Bitcoin Miner, the world’s number one Bitcoin game, is celebrating two years of its collaboration with ZBD, a leading fintech company powering digital economies for gamers and developers. Since the partnership began, Bitcoin Miner has gone from a forgotten title with no players to becoming one of the largest play-and-earn games ever, with over 2 million lifetime users.

ZBD’s Lightning-powered payments technology enables developers to inject instant rewards into their games to boost retention and community engagement. Fumb Games, the studio behind Bitcoin Miner, partnered with ZBD in March 2022 to help revive its flagship title, enabling it to reward players with fragments of Bitcoin for playing the game as normal. From the outset, the integration of ZBD’s tech had a marked impact, leading to a 12x boost in 30-day retention. Two years on, Bitcoin Miner is achieving 40,000 daily active users, making it the biggest Bitcoin game by user count.

Besides the retention benefit of rewards, which leads to player retention that exceeds 6 months, the success of Bitcoin Miner has also been fueled by community-based features such as regular live events. The majority of Bitcoin Miner players are US-based millennial males who enjoy engaging with gaming communities, with weekly events leading to a 20% increase in revenue. As well as its own community of engaged players, Bitcoin Miner benefits from the ZBD app user base of more than a million gamers.

Paul West, Founder of Fumb Games, said “Bitcoin Miner has proven that US players love games that are fun, snackable and rewarding. The  game is not only sustainable, but has soared to new heights since the partnership with ZBD. It’s no surprise that I’m very excited for the future of bitcoin and player-friendly rewarded games.”

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Ben Cousens, Chief Strategy Officer at ZBD, said “The two-year collaboration with Paul and Fumb Games on Bitcoin Miner has been a quintessential success story for what we’re building at ZBD. It proves the value in offering rewards for gamers and the success of ZBD’s rewards and payments tech at making it possible at speed and scale. We will no doubt see further impressive numbers for Bitcoin Miner that cement its status as world’s number one Bitcoin game, and we also look forward to extending the potential benefits of Bitcoin rewards to more developers.”

In November 2023, Fumb Games also integrated ZBD’s technology in its idle tycoon RPG SpaceY. ZBD works with more than 100 game developers worldwide, including major brands such as Square Enix, and is also used by innovative adtech companies like Slice and AdInMo.

The post Bitcoin Miner celebrates two years of hugely successful collaboration with ZBD appeared first on European Gaming Industry News.

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Gaming

UK Gaming Charity SpecialEffect to Receive Special Award at 20th BAFTA Games Awards

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BAFTA has announced that UK gaming charity SpecialEffect, will receive the prestigious Special Award at the 20th BAFTA Games Awards. The award, which recognises outstanding contributions to games, film and television, is one of the highest accolades bestowed by BAFTA. Dr Mick Donegan MBE, founder and CEO of SpecialEffect, will pick up the Special Award at the annual BAFTA Games Awards ceremony on Thursday 11 April.

In 2007, Mick Donegan founded SpecialEffect to help people with even the most severe physical challenges to access video games. The organisation uses specialised technology to enhance access to video games and creative self-expression for people with a wide range of Disabilities.

SpecialEffect’s success began as a result of the collaboration between Mick, a specialist in assistive technology and his son Bill, a keen gamer with a background in product design. Since its creation, the charity has grown to thirty employees, raising all their own funds, and has provided specialist one-to-one assessments and support to severely disabled people throughout the UK and beyond.

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Dr Mick Donegan MBE, SpecialEffect founder and CEO, said: “With a background in special education, I realised how much people with severe physical disabilities were missing out by not being able to play. I started SpecialEffect not only to help individuals to play video games but also to collaborate with the games industry to make their games more accessible ‘at source’. Since then, we have been privileged to be invited to share our ideas with more and more developers all over the world. Now, 17 years since SpecialEffect began, it’s an absolute honour for SpecialEffect’s work to be recognised by BAFTA.”

Emma Baehr, BAFTA executive director of awards and content, said: “SpecialEffect’s work is essential to the games world and is hugely deserving of a BAFTA Special Award. Their innovative and supportive approach to making games accessible drives progress within the industry, collaborating with developers and studios on new technologies to make games within reach to more people. We look forward to honouring their contribution to games at the ceremony on Thursday 11 April.”

Throughout the years, SpecialEffect has been involved in collaborating with Xbox, Sony and Logitech, to help design accessible controllers and a switch kit, enabling thousands more severely disabled players to access their games using a wide range of control devices. They have also worked with games studios and developers to help make their games more accessible. The organisation also developed EyeMine, a freely downloadable gaze-controlled interface to enable players to enjoy Minecraft through gaze-control alone.

Later this year will see the rollout of their EyeGaze Games (currently available on PC only) onto Android and iOS, games designed to be fully accessible for people with physical disabilities, whether they use gaze control, joysticks, switches or gamepads.

The post UK Gaming Charity SpecialEffect to Receive Special Award at 20th BAFTA Games Awards appeared first on European Gaming Industry News.

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DPS

Industry heavyweights all set for biggest ever Indian Gaming Tradeshow

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This year’s Indian Gaming Tradeshow, featuring the Digital Play Summit (DPS), will showcase more of the industry’s most high-profile operators than ever before, alongside a formidable line-up of its major providers.

Stand-out performers like iGT, Everi, Konami, Playtech, Chalkline, Continent 8, and GBank, as well as other stakeholders such as DraftKings and Fanduel, will be exhibiting at the Anaheim Convention Center, California, from April 8-11.

For the first time the 2024 event will also demonstrate tribal gaming’s adherence to player protection with the launch of a Sustainable Gambling Zone (SGZ).

The SGZ will be a focal point for collaboration where companies can discuss best practices, learn about the latest research and discover innovations in the area of harm prevention and long-term business and industry sustainability.

Presented as a physical area on the DPS show floor, it will feature kiosks where organizations committed to responsible gambling and players’ health will exhibit their services, products and tools.

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The SGZ is supported by IGT and endorsed by the National Council on Problem Gambling, Massachusetts Council on Gaming and Health and The International Center for Responsible Gaming who were also among the first groups to confirm their presence with a kiosk.

The initiative, previously known as the Consumer Protection Zone at ICE London but unique for a North American gaming event, invites other organizations that put responsible gambling at the core of their practice to show their support.

Further exhibitors, sponsors and supporters of this key event in the industry calendar are expected in the next two weeks, all set to explore the incredible opportunities for growth in tribal gaming.

Ernie Stevens, Jr, Indian Gaming Association Chairman, said: “We’re delighted to have compiled such an expansive list of exhibitors as our stakeholders play a vital role in moving this industry forward, and positive progression is at the core of everything we do at the IGA.

“A key part of that is everybody working sustainably and progressively. The Sustainable Gambling Zone at Digital Play Summit is the perfect vehicle for that message and is a fantastic initiative.

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“We’re excited to welcome exhibitors and visitors new and time-served to Anaheim to discover more of what we stand for and how working Indian country offers the opportunity to reap tangible rewards.”

Registration for the DigitalPlay Summit is included in all conference and tradeshow registration packages for the Indian Gaming Tradeshow & Convention.

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