Playfire
Page Module:Infobox/styles.css has no content.
| Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'Module:InfoboxImage/data' not found. Playfire logo | |
Type of site | Social network service |
|---|---|
| Available in | English |
| Founded | December 2007 in London, UK |
| Dissolved | 30 may 2017 |
| Headquarters | London, United Kingdom |
| Area served | Worldwide |
| [[Organizational founder|FounderTemplate:Pluralize from text]] | Kieran O'Neill, Sophia Hayes, Ben Phillips |
| Key people | Paul Sulyok (Co-Founder & CEO Green Man Gaming & Playfire) |
| Industry | Social networking service, video games |
| Commercial | Yes |
| Registration | Required |
| Launched | Script error: No such module "Date time". |
| Current status | Inactive |
Script error: No such module "Check for conflicting parameters".
Playfire was a social gaming networking website targeted towards core video game players. Playfire allowed users the ability to automatically track their in-game achievements, trophies, and gameplay, as well as earn rewards for playing their games.
History
The company was founded in December 2007 by Kieran O'Neill, Sophia Hayes & Ben Phillips and Playfire was first launched into private beta in March 2008. A public beta followed in June 2008. Playfire secured £1.3m Funding in November 2009,[1] and went on to be acquired by Green Man Gaming in 2012. At the time of acquisition, Playfire had more than 1.2 million users tracking over 50,000 video games on the website.[2]
Before creating Playfire, two of the Playfire founders had started and ran a PlayStation 3 focused news and forums website called PlayStation Universe. The idea for Playfire came from observing how gamers included information about themselves such as their PSN ID, recently played games and other things in their signatures below each forum post.
Playfire was the first website to release a PlayStation gamercard which attracted a large number of gamers to the service.[3] The site iterated through a number of features, and introduced automatic tracking of Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC gameplay in March 2011.[4]
In September 2011 Playfire partnered with GameSpot to bring Playfire users profile to GameSpot through an API partnership.
On 9 July 2012 Playfire was acquired by digital games retailer Green Man Gaming.[5]
At the end of 2013, Green Man Gaming announced that its Playfire service was able to track in-game achievements/trophies and gameplay on Xbox One[6] and PlayStation 4.[7]
In January 2014, Playfire launched its Rewards BETA.[8] the Rewards BETA encourages users to link their Steam account to their Playfire account in order to earn Green Man Gaming store Credit.[9] Available Rewards are listed daily on the Playfire Rewards. Page[10] and by May 2014, over one million Rewards had been given out to BETA participants[11]
Playfire sponsored the Most Played Game Award at the 32nd Golden Joystick Awards,[12] and sponsored the Gamers' Choice Award at the Games Media Awards 2014[13] in October 2014.
In blog post on 7 November 2016, Green Man Gaming announced that Playfire is closing. It will be merged with their new "Community" site that GMG made on the Muut platform.[14] Later, on 5 May 2017 Green Man Gaming announced Playfire is coming to a close this year.[15] As of 30 May 2017 Playfire was merged with GMG Community with its website playfire.com now redirecting to greenmangaming.com/playfire.
Investment
Playfire initially raised £1.3m in funding from investors including Niklas Zennström (the founder of Skype), Michael Birch (the founder of Bebo), Chris Deering (the former Chairman of SCE), William Reeve (the founder of LOVEFiLM) and others.[16]
References
Page Template:Reflist/styles.css has no content.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."Kieran O'Neill receives £1.3m backing for Playfire". Startups.co.uk. November 25, 2013.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Butcher, Mike (February 24, 2012). "Playfire Hits A Million Users Of Its Analytics For Gamers".
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Alexander, Leigh (July 8, 2008). "Playfire Launches PS3 Trophies Gamercard Service". Kotaku.com. Archived from the original on July 4, 2008.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Tom Cheshire (August 17, 2011). "Playfire: The social network dedicated to gamers". Wired. Archived from the original on December 1, 2011.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.OMRI PETITTE (July 9, 2012). "Green Man Gaming merges with gaming social network Playfire". VentureBeat.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."Playfire now tracking Xbox One - This Is Xbox". 10 December 2013.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."Gamasutra - The Art & Business of Making Games". Gamasutra. 2013-12-23. Archived from the original on December 26, 2013.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Matthew Jarvis (January 30, 2014). "Green Man Gaming launches Playfire Rewards beta". PC Retail.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."Get paid to play Steam games with Playfire". September 10, 2014. Archived from the original on September 11, 2014.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."Rewards BETA - Playfire".
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."Playfire blazes through the ONE MILLION rewards mark!". MCV UK. May 7, 2014.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."Playfire announces Most Played Golden Joystick". PC Gamer. October 21, 2014.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."Games Media Awards: Gamers' Choice vote is open now". MCV UK. September 30, 2014.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."New community platform on the way". November 7, 2016.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."Farewell, Playfire". May 5, 2017.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.O'Hear, Steve (November 10, 2009). "Confirmed: Gamer social network Playfire secures $2.1m Series A". Techcrunch.
