PlayerScale

PlayerScale
TypeSubsidiary
Industrye-commerce, internet advertising, social gaming
Founded2009; 17 years ago (2009)
FounderChris Benjaminsen Edit this on Wikidata
Headquarters
Belmont
,
California
Key peopleJesper Jensen (CEO)
John Vifian (COO)
Chris Benjaminsen (CPO)
Oliver Pedersen (CTO)
ProductsPlayer.IO
Number of employees
14 (January 2013)
ParentYahoo!
Websitegamesnet.yahoo.com

PlayerScale, Inc. is a Belmont-based gaming infrastructure provider. As of 23 May 2013 it operates as a subsidiary of Yahoo!, but it is still functioning as a stand-alone business unit. As of 9 April 2016, Games Platform Company ApS acquired Yahoo Games Backend Services.

Player.IO

PlayerScale's Player.IO is a platform for online games. It works across consoles, the web, PCs, Macs, and on mobile phones. Player.IO is used on a daily basis by an estimated 150 million people worldwide. It works with various programming languages, including C++, Java, .NET, Objective-C, HTML5, Unity, Flash, iOS and Android. The platform includes payment processing, online chat, analytics, virtual currencies, distributed caching, authentication, social login, leaderboards, localization, among other things.

Everybody Edits

One of the Player.IO showcase projects was the maze-based platform game Everybody Edits. 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.

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." 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."

In March 2019, the game suffered a data breach, exposing 871 thousand unique email addresses, alongside usernames and IP addresses. In July 2019, another data breach occurred, leaking 882 unique email addresses, usernames and passwords in plaintext, along with in-game report files. Everybody Edits was eventually shut down on 31 December 2020, the last day Adobe supported its Flash Player.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 Taylor, Colleen (23 May 2013). "Yahoo Acquires Gaming Infrastructure Startup PlayerScale". TechCrunch. Retrieved 20 July 2014.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 "PlayerScale, Inc.: Private Company Information - Businessweek". Bloomberg Businessweek. Retrieved 20 July 2014.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (link)
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Takahashi, Dean (28 January 2013). "PlayerScale handles behind-the-scenes infrastructure for games — and 100 million players". VentureBeat. Retrieved 20 July 2014.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Preimesberger, Chris (23 May 2013). "Yahoo Buys Another Startup in Online Gamer PlayerScale". eWeek. Retrieved 20 July 2014.
  5. ↑ "How Yahoo's acquisitions fit into Mayer's master plan". CNN. Archived from the original on July 19, 2013. Retrieved 20 July 2014.
  6. ↑ Williams, Steven; Perez, Madeline (6 July 2014). "Yahoo's acquisition strategy is actually a talent strategy". The Washington Post. Retrieved 20 July 2014.
  7. ↑ "PlayerIO • View topic - THE GAMES PLATFORM COMPANY BUYS YAHOO GAMES BACKEND SERVICES". playerio.com. Archived from the original on 2020-09-24. Retrieved 2025-07-08.
  8. ↑ Koetsier, John (23 May 2013). "Marissa Mayer and Yahoo are on fire, acquiring gaming company PlayerScale". VentureBeat. Retrieved 20 July 2014.
  9. ↑ "Player.IO Showcase: Games, Projects and more built with Player.IO - Player.IO". PlayerScale. Archived from the original on 20 May 2013. Retrieved 20 July 2014.
  10. ↑ Crossley, Rob (28 February 2011). "How I made a $10k-per-month Flash game in my spare time". MCV. Develop. Retrieved 20 July 2014.
  11. ↑ Bardinelli, John (8 March 2011). "Everybody Edits - Walkthrough, Tips, Review". Jay Is Games. Retrieved 27 March 2024.
  12. ↑ Cameron, Phill (5 July 2010). "User Degenerated: Everybody Edits". Rock Paper Shotgun. Retrieved 14 April 2024.
  13. ↑ "Have I Been Pwned: Pwned websites". Have I Been Pwned?. 3 April 2019. Retrieved 7 April 2019.
  14. ↑ "Everybody Edits lekt gegevens 871.000 spelers" [Everybody Edits leaks data 871,000 players]. Security.nl (in Dutch). 3 April 2019. Retrieved 7 April 2019.
  15. ↑ "Data Security Breach 2 - Please Update Your Passwords". 22 July 2019.
  16. ↑ "EE Offline, EEU Opt-In, & Big Changes!". Everybodyedits.com. 26 December 2020. Retrieved 27 March 2024.
  17. ↑ "Adobe Flash Player End of Life". Adobe Inc. Retrieved 27 March 2024.