Interview: Live Gamer Beefs Virtual Economies Offering With Twofish Acquisition

Virtual commerce company Live Gamer has acquired in-game economy middleware provider Twofish, incorporating its casual and social transactions-focused data solutions into its full suite. Live Gamer aims to be a "one-stop shop" for developers wanting to add virtual economies to games of all stripes, co-founder and president Andy Schneider tells Gamasutra. The company offers an e-commerce platform suite that allows developers to manage virtual items, billing, global payment systems and anti-fraud measures within their games. "We're extremely excited," he says. "This is yet another stepping stone in our strategy to expand our commerce solution, and it's a really significant move for us to get into both the casual space and social space, and to add the Twofish tech to our overall product suite." It's the second acquisition this year for the rapidly-growing company, after its purchase of South Korean platform N-Cash, which lets users purchase virtual items, content and upgrades directly from publishers, earlier this Summer. Neither the terms of that deal nor the Twofish acquisition have been publicly disclosed. Twofish also brings a proprietary data platform to the deal, enabling Live Gamer to offer its clients a wide range of post-purchase intelligence that can help them develop user engagement design methodologies, improve conversion rates and average revenue per user, and observe the balance results of in-game economic decisions. "Our technology is part of the solution, but also being a business partner to publishers and developers is another part of the coin," says Schneider. "Developers have done this to a large degree, making compelling experiences and balancing in-game virtual economies, but they haven't had access to the tools or domain history and expertise." The newly-merged companies will now together serve over 70 clients handling over 3 million transactions, and the service integration is already well underway, according to Live Gamer. "This acquisition caps six months of explosive growth for Twofish," says Twofish president Lisa Rutherford. "Virtual economies have become a driving force in social and casual gaming, and now we’re delighted to be joining the Live Gamer family to deliver best-in-class technology for our partners."