PapayaMobile Expands Social Network, Development Tools To iOS

Major Android-based social network PapayaMobile has added iOS development support to its mobile software development kit, also adding the option for cross-platform use of its social network features. Developers using the latest version of Papaya's SDK can now export their titles to both Android and iOS using a single code base, the company says, letting both versions connect to the same social servers for cross-platform player challenges, game invitations and leaderboards. Papaya SDK users can also makes use of the company's free "Gateway to China" program, which promises to localize, distributes, and promotes mobile titles in that emerging market. "While we've experienced great success and growth by mainly focusing on the Android platform since our launch in 2008, we feel that now is the right time to expand our offerings to the iOS market," PapayaMobile CEO and co-founder Si Shen said in a statement. Papaya already boasts 30 million users for games on its network, which includes games developed by Papaya and by third party developers. In a recent interview with Gamasutra, though, Shen said Papaya was shifting away from internal game development in order to provide a fair playing field for outside developers. "If Facebook, for instance, was also developing games, most of the third party developers would suspect they weren't being treated fairly on the platform, because there's always the image of conflict if you do that," Shen said. "We want to be a more neutral platform, an agnostic platform, so we can help the other developers to grow. We don't want to compete directly with our third party developers."