Spil users ‘spend up to £38/month on virtual goods’

Free-to-play customers are spending up to £38 a month on virtual goods in games from publisher Spil Games, according to the social games company.

It also claimed that since breaking into the casual games market in July 2011, it now has more than 170 million unique users playing its games every month

Meanwhile, it stated that the company’s global average revenue per user had been growing by 30 per cent each month.

The figures come from the publisher’s upcoming 2011 State of Gaming review, although Develop has yet to receive the full document.

The publisher also revealed that it saw 11 billion gameplays in 2011, and that teenage boys generated the highest average revenue per user. It reported that its most popular markets have emerged from Brazil and the U.S.

“The breadth of our offering and the personal approach available to developers is driving the kinds of numbers we’re seeing on our platforms,” said Spil Games CEO Peter Driessen.

“Players clearly want to go to a platform specialised in online gaming, and this is a great opportunity for triple-A developers.

"We expect they are positioned to make at least $5 million per title on our platforms this year.”

Spil Games has a catalogue of more than 4,000 online games mainly targetted at girls, teens and families, brought to users through separate gaming platforms for each target audience.

The data comes from statistics recorded through January to December 2011.