Today, Offerpal released the results of a survey that targeted social gamers’ monetization activities.  Specifically, the report found that 29.7% of social gamers do not have the ability or means to pay for virtual currencies with cash, and 53.3% of consumers are willing to engage in alternative payments, like offers, to earn virtual currency. The report also found some other interesting statistics related to monetization behavior.
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Super Rewards, an Adknowledge company and one of the largest virtual currency offer platforms on the web, has announced today a new version of its ad offer platform for Flash.  The new platform allows players to accept any Super Rewards payment option without leaving their Flash game.  Previous to this, gamers that wanted to use Super Rewards offers would have to click over to another screen, and sometimes would have to quit their current game to engage in the monetization aspect of the game. Super Rewards is stating that the new platform can be integrated into a Flash game in less than 30 minutes.
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Social Gold, a popular virtual currency and payments solution provider, announced yesterday that their payments platform will be made available in GamerSafe’s community of over 10,000 online game developers and publishers.  This will enable microtransactions payments from within any GamerSafe game, and is a move to increase the ARPU for these games.  GamerSafe is a service that allows game developers to add unique features to their games: universally saved games, achievements, microtransactions and virtual currency.
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Yoo-Mee, a new product from Hooked Media Group, is a new social gaming platform that introduces the ability to win real money and prizes. By enabling users to play cash tournaments and one-on-one challenges, players have the ability to win “Gold”, which is measured in real dollars and can be cashed out at any time.  The concept of virtual currencies which can be cashed out has not been done yet by the many virtual currencies available on Facebook, and Yoo-Mee is attempting to be the first mover.
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Social Gold, one of the leading virtual currency and monetization providers, has partnered with one of the largest casual game destinations on the web, Miniclip.com.  Miniclip’s 550 games and 57  million monthly players will now have the ability to use Social Gold to purchase in-game virtual goods with just a few clicks.  There were no details of any specific virtual goods at this time.
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SponsorPay, a Berlin – Germany based virtual goods monetization startup, has acquired GratisPay, a European competitor developing a similar service.
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Virtual Goods gold rush is in its early stages, however, the nascent market is showing promise to one day become a major revenue source for Social Networks and Social Games. Engage Digital Media, a market research firm with specialization in virtual goods research, is reporting that more than $1.38 billion were invested in 87 virtual goods related companies in 2009.
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The week of January 18th, 2010 had a lot to offer in the social games department. Zynga demonstratedthe massive ability to raise charity through gaming, Facebook announced a new “Games Dashboard”, South Korea’s Supreme Courts made a major ruling for Virtual Currencies and the BBC re-entered the gaming space. Read on to find out more!
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This week, the South Korean Supreme Court made a ruling stating that online games’ virtual currency, or “cyber money”, can legally be exchanged for real world currency.  The ruling also stated that transactions using this “cyber money” will be taxable.
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As an amateur video maker who works in social games, I find it extremely surprising that Social Games, once derided as having no possible profit potential, are able to generate powerful revenues. Because in the video world, ‘monetizing content’ is still a far-away dream.
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