GDC 13: Unity and Facebook partner up

Unity Technologies has teamed up with Facebook to launch an improved Unity experience on the social platform.

It is hoped that the collaboration will improve the user’s experience of Unity games, continue to drive core games that build on the Unity Web Player, and make it easier for developers to build cross-platform experiences.

With over 200 million global installs, the Unity Web Player is a leading online solution for core games and AAA visuals. Unity’s construction of a new social network API in the Unity Web Player has enabled Facebook to improve the full screen and the full canvas experience of Unity games by eliminating the need for users to leave full screen for social interaction, and making it simpler for developers to integrate with Facebook’s social graph.

Over 75 million active Facebook users have installed the Unity Web Player to enjoy popular Unity games such as Offensive Combat, Robot Rising, Wizard of Oz, Uberstrike, Kings Bounty and I AM Playr. The new integrations will help make these existing experiences better while laying the foundation for further Unity Web Player adoption and feature expansion.

“The Unity Web Player is an incredible browser-based platform for core games”, said Sean Ryan, director of games partnerships, Facebook, “People on Facebook are looking for the type of immersive games that have traditionally existed on consoles and desktop PCs. This collaboration will drive discovery of the Unity Web Player for Facebook users, make it easier for Unity games to integrate with Facebook, improve the full-screen experience on our games platform, and make it easier for these developers to build cross platform games across desktop and mobile."

"The experience of playing a Unity game in Facebook is vastly improved in Unity 4, and working with Facebook makes it even better,” added David Helgason, CEO of Unity Technologies. “We are already seeing an amazing crop of quality games coming to Facebook, and can’t wait to see how developers make use of this new opportunity."

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