Six studios cut deals for a slice of Tango's $25M games fund

Back in July, cross-platform mobile messaging app maker Tango made a show of nurturing games on its platform by establishing a $25 million fund for investing in partnerships with game developers and nurturing its own nascent game development efforts. Today, it confirmed investment in six development teams from a potential applicant pool of over 200, but named only three of them: San Francisco's Shiny Shoe Games, the Swedish studio Planeto, and China-based Falafel Games, which aims to produce games for the burgeoning Middle East market. Under the terms of their agreements these studios receive marketing support from the company both without and within the Tango messaging app, which has 250 million members. They'll also have access to Tango's SDK, allowing them to hook their mobile games into the Tango app's suite of messaging and notification tools. "We are excited to start launching great mobile games on the Tango platform," stated Tango VP of games publishing Jim Ying in a press release confirming the news. "To help drive the growth in our games business, and to provide the best support for our game developer partners, we've tripled our in-house games publishing team." The company is continuing to accept applications for investment deals from developers via the Global Games Fund website.