CrowdStar Signs Five Year Deal with Facebook, Making Credits Its Exclusive Currency

Eric Eldon• Jun 29th, 2010

Business, Credits, monetization, Payments, VirtualGoods

Social game developer CrowdStar is cementing its existing status as the lead test partner for Credits, Facebook’s virtual currency. The two companies have signed a deal where the developer will exclusively use Credits as the paid virtual currency in all of its games for the next five years. It has already been using Credits exclusively since this past December, and claims that its average revenue per user (ARPU) has gone up by almost 50% as a result.

CrowdStar has been in a good position to try out Credits, because it gained most of its users last fall; developers that got established earlier have tended to invest more money in their own monetization services. Many are concerned about the cost of Credits, including the 30% fee that Facebook takes out of all purchases of the currency as well as the loss of control and breakage. By starting fresh, CrowdStar has less to lose even as it sees what it can gain.

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6 Responses to “CrowdStar Signs Five Year Deal with Facebook, Making Credits Its Exclusive Currency”

RockYou: The Latest Big Developer Planning to Use Facebook Credits Exclusively says:
July 13th, 2010 at 2:57 pm
[...] sign deals to exclusively use its virtual currency, Credits, in their applications. So far, it has CrowdStar and LOLapps using Credits exclusively as the direct payment method, with rivals like Zynga [...]
RockYou Planning to Use Facebook Credits Exclusively for Virtual Currency Purchases says:
July 13th, 2010 at 3:15 pm
[...] sign deals to exclusively use its virtual currency, Credits, in their applications. So far, it has CrowdStar and LOLapps using Credits exclusively as the direct payment method, with rivals like Zynga [...]
RockYou Also Signs on to Exclusive Five-Year Deal for Facebook Credits says:
July 22nd, 2010 at 9:02 am
[...] who adopt it — also signing up other developers to exclusive five-year deals, including CrowdStar and [...]
Zynga is Switching to Credits in Its Facebook Games says:
September 8th, 2010 at 9:25 am
[...] Credits-only game last fall, testing out Credits late last year in Happy Island; it eventually signed a five-year contract in June. RockYou signed on the next month, and Playdom, which is currently the second-largest developer [...]
EA/Playfish Also Signs Five Year Deal to Exclusively Use Credits on Facebook says:
November 2nd, 2010 at 11:13 am
[...] CrowdStar, Zynga, Playdom, RockYou and most other social game developers on Facebook, EA’s Playfish has [...]
EA/Playfish Signs a Five Year Deal to Exclusively Use Credits on Facebook says:
November 2nd, 2010 at 11:32 am
[...] CrowdStar, Zynga, Playdom, RockYou and most other social game developers on Facebook, EA’s Playfish has [...]

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