Facebook starts new European games division

With social gaming becoming increasingly more popular worldwide, Facebook has decided to create a European games division to manage its relationships with overseas developers. Speaking to The Guardian UK, Christian Hernandez, director of EMEA business development and partnerships at Facebook, said that European companies like Wooga and King.com have demonstrated that Facebook needs to pay close attention to the games coming from that region. "In the US, we have a team of engineers, product managers and partnerships folks who only do gaming, from Zynga down to two-person shops. Now we're creating that same unit in Europe too," he said. Hernandez explained that this new division will focus primarily on mobile gaming, allowing Facebook to further expand its foothold on tablets and other devices. "You'll see a lot of investment from us in teaching developers how to use those channels in mobile," he said. As part of that investment, Facebook plans to send a number of its engineers to Stockholm, London, and Tel Aviv to host educational events that will teach local developers how to build successful apps for the mobile platform. Last week, Facebook saw a particularly notable addition to its game lineup, as Rovio finally launched the social network adaptation of its casual behemoth Angry Birds.