Facebook's Ryan: Credits Switch Not Really A Controversy

Author: by Staff

In a new feature interview, Sean Ryan, the newly-installed head of Facebook's games team talks to Gamasutra about how the switch to mandatory Facebook Credits for payment on July 1 was not as big a deal as it sounded. He tells Gamasutra that his team got "lots of feedback" about the switch to Facebook Credits; the payment option was made mandatory this month. "Depending on the developer, some have seen significant increases. Some are undergoing some transition pain right now, and we're working through it with them," says Ryan. "There's no question that it's a transition for some of them, but already we're seeing some significant improvements from a bunch of them." His philosophy for the unified payment method is thus. "We should be able to take that -- no different than Apple does -- and get to scale in that business, so that developers hopefully can focus just on making great games. We should be able to get to where developers are thrilled they don't have to deal with this, just like with Apple." He doesn't see the controversy as such a big deal. "The so-called 'controversy' was more about retrofitting something into an existing platform," he says. Instead, he really sees only upside: "Over time, we can do a better job providing the service than individual developers can do themselves, particularly smaller ones." The full feature is chock full of quotes from Ryan, in which he discusses Facebook's roadmap for the games space, the company's approach to working with developers, the competition from Google+ and mobile social gaming networks, and much more -- and it's live now on Gamasutra.