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Digital River Drives Virtual Economies for Global Game Titles

Wednesday, September 1st, 2010

Leading online game publishers benefit from a combination of in-game commerce solutions

MINNEAPOLIS – Aug. 26, 2010 – Digital River, Inc. (NASDAQ: DRIV ), a leading provider of global e-commerce solutions, announced it has been selected by seven global game publishers to power in-game commerce for popular social game titles. Digital River is helping these publishers manage virtual economies and monetize their games through a combination of in-game commerce solutions. These solutions range from virtual goods and currencies to micro-transactions, global payments, billing, analytics and e-marketing.

Recently, Digital River launched in-game e-commerce solutions for the following leading game titles:

  • Bubble Island:
    Developed by wooga, Bubble Island is an exciting puzzle game based on a popular arcade concept operated in StudiVZ and Facebook.

  • Dawn of Nations:
    This browser-based strategy, massively multiplayer online (MMO) game published by element36 immerses players in World War II.

  • MonsterWorld:
    wooga’s third title in the social gaming space allows Facebook and StudiVZ users to grow exotic plants and realize their own unique vision of a monster world.

  • onGOLF:
    A live online simulation golf game from Deseven, onGolf features some of the most recognizable golf brands.

  • Qraut:
    Qraut is a browser-based strategy MMO game, bringing the successful Russian title ‘Botva’ to Europe.

  • Vikings of Thule:
    Developed by Nordic publisher Gogogic, Vikings of Thule is a revolutionary Facebook-based MMO game.

  • WebbliWorld:
    Produced by Aardman, WebbliWorld is a global online virtual world for children that addresses the environment, climate change and recycling.

  • Riot Games:
    fatfoogoo is the global monetization partner for Riot’s RTS title “League of Legends”, handling virtual currencies, managing storefronts and providing vouchers, billing and payment functionality for Riot as well as for their international publishing partners.

  • Digital River:
    Has licensed fatfoogoo’s best of breed wallet and user-management technology to incorporate these into their e-commerce platform “Global Commerce”.

“More game publishers and developers are making the move towards in-game commerce models,” said Jeff Hemenway, Digital River’s group vice president of games. “They are experimenting with new ways to monetize their games and keep players immersed in online game play. Finding an e-commerce partner with a proven and flexible in-game solution that is scalable around the world is essential to making this successful transition.”

Digital River’s e-commerce solution offers game publishers all the scalability and reliability of a proven in-store platform along with turn-key technologies designed to operate a successful in-game marketplace. Together, Digital River and its recently acquired in-game commerce provider, fatfoogoo, deliver a comprehensive suite of in-game store functions. These functions include global payments, fraud prevention services, inventory management, player-to-player marketplaces, auction capabilities as well as the use of virtual goods, currencies and electronic wallets.

About Digital River, Inc.
Digital River, Inc., a leading provider of global e-commerce solutions, builds and manages online businesses for software and game publishers, consumer electronics manufacturers, distributors, online retailers and affiliates. Its multi-channel e-commerce solution, which supports both direct and indirect sales, is designed to help companies of all sizes maximize online revenues as well as reduce the costs and risks of running an e-commerce operation. The company’s comprehensive platform offers site development and hosting, order management, fraud management, export controls, tax management, physical and digital product fulfillment, multi-lingual customer service, advanced reporting and strategic marketing services.

Founded in 1994, Digital River is headquartered in Minneapolis with offices across the U.S., Asia, Europe and South America. For more details about Digital River, visit the corporate website , call +1 952-253-1234 or follow the company on Twitter .

Forward-looking Statement

In addition to the historical information contained herein, this press release contains forward-looking statements, such as statements containing the words, “will,” “plans,” “intends,” “expects,” and similar words. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of Digital River, or industry results, to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors include, among others: Digital River’s operating history and variability of operating results; competition in the electronic commerce market; the ability of Digital River to support online and in-game commerce sales for social game titles; the market’s acceptance of such offerings; and other risk factors referenced in Digital River’s public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Digital River is a registered trademark of Digital River, Inc. All other company and product names are trademarks, registrations or copyrights of their respective owners.

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Digital River Acquires fatfoogoo

Wednesday, May 5th, 2010

MINNEAPOLIS – May 5, 2010 – Digital River, Inc. (NASDAQ: DRIV ), a leading provider of global e-commerce solutions, announced that it has acquired fatfoogoo, a Europe-based, in-game and online commerce service provider. The combined forces of Digital River’s e-commerce solutions with fatfoogoo’s technology will offer game publishers and developers an unparalleled, single e-commerce connection to manage their online product sales both in-store and in-game.

logo_dr“The sale of virtual goods through micro transactions continues to grow in popularity with consumers and is establishing new revenue models for the games industry,” said Joel Ronning, CEO of Digital River. “With the addition of fatfoogoo, we’ve strengthened our commitment to the gaming marketplace. We believe the combination of our in-game and in-store commerce solution along with our subscription management capabilities will be unmatched in the industry. This partnership continues our promise to provide existing and future clients with the leading e-commerce technology and expertise they expect from Digital River.”

The e-commerce solutions from Digital River and fatfoogoo are easily integrated to offer game publishers all the scalability and reliability of a proven in-store platform along with turn-key technology designed to operate a successful in-game marketplace. In addition to providing in-game store functions, such as global payments and inventory management, the solution supports the use of virtual goods and currencies, electronic wallets, peer-to-peer marketplaces and auction capabilities.

Digital River’s fatfoogoo business unit will continue to operate out of its current location in Vienna, Austria. fatfoogoo will deliver its technology as an integrated part of Digital River’s e-commerce offering for games as well as a stand-alone solution.

“We are excited to join Digital River’s family of companies. This acquisition provides fatfoogoo with the backing of a proven e-commerce leader and enhances our leadership in the European market,” said Martin Herdina, fatfoogoo’s CEO. “Together we’re positioned to lead the future of in-game commerce with a solution that will uniquely stand out in a competitive marketplace.”

Under the terms of the agreement, Digital River acquired fatfoogoo as part of a cash transaction for approximately $10 million. The agreement also provides fatfoogoo shareholders with an earn-out opportunity based on the fatfoogoo business unit achieving certain performance targets. Other terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

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Payment Card Industry (PCI) Grants fatfoogoo PCI Level 1 Compliance Status

Friday, January 15th, 2010

fatfoogoo, the leading provider of in-game and online commerce ecosystems, today announced it has attained the highest standard of data security as measured by the Payment Card Industry – PCI Level 1. Joining the elite group of just 1,000 service providers worldwide, fatfoogoo continues it’s commitment to both consumers’ and clients’ online security , making it one of the most secure ecommerce platform providers available today.

pci_dss_logoThe PCI Security Standards Council, founded by American Express, Discover Financial Services, JCB International, MasterCard Worldwide, and Visa, Inc., has defined detailed qualifications for various levels of PCI compliance. The service provider designation for PCI Level 1 compliance indicates that all payments and credit card transactions sent through fatfoogoo meet the highest standards possible for data security.

The PCI Level 1 certification process involves a rigorous audit process conducted by PCI Security Standards Council representatives. Auditors from Stuttgart, Germany based Acertigo meticulously examined and tested fatfoogoo’s software architecture, ensuring that it would uphold the highest levels of security. In addition to software testing, PCI auditors also examined fatfoogoo’s system and hardware infrastructure, ensuring their PCI Level 1 standards. Auditors addressed the human element and verified that fatfoogo staff have been properly trained on both internal and external vulnerabilities that could compromise data or credit card security.

“fatfoogoo prides itself in providing our customers the very best in microtransaction technology,” said Martin Herdina, co-founder and CEO, fatfoogoo. “Having been granted Security Standards Council’s PCI Level 1 compliance status, we recognize the importance of data security and provide our clients with the safest e-commerce technology available.”

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PAYMENT INDUSTRY EXPERT THOMAS AIGNER JOINS FATFOOGOO

Tuesday, October 6th, 2009

fatfoogoo, the leading monetization software provider, has secured the services of payment and gaming expert Thomas Aigner. As Vice President of Business Development, Thomas will be responsible for strengthening the company’s continual growth by building up new and existing partnerships.

Thomas Aigner, 28, moves to fatfoogoo and the virtual world of in-game ecosystems after having worked for the online prepaid method specialist paysafecard. “The micro-transaction industry has a very bright future and fatfoogoo are taking it forward,” says Aigner. “They’re constantly developing and improving what they do, which is to offer a great white-label one stop solution for game companies.“

As Vice President of Business Development, his main task at fatfoogoo will be to build up strong relationships to existing and potential partners. “Seeing this development, it’s really exciting to be part of fatfoogoo now and managing their strategic approach for several markets,“ Aigner explains. “I’m also responsible for managing the relationships with our payment partners and of course taking care of our customers using the fatfoogoo platform.“

Thomas has built strategies for international roll outs in the past and taken part in several start ups. From 2005 to 2009, he worked within the payment industry as a Business Development Manager and later as Head of Sales at paysafecard, Europe’s leading prepaid payment solution provider.
Thomas is a graduate in telecommunications and media technique from the University of Applied Science St. Poelten in Austria. He is also a keen traveller with an enthusiasm for extreme sports and gaming.

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fatfoogoo getting serious about social

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009

Throughout our lifespan, fatfoogoo has created a number of monetization and payment platforms and options for a wide range of gaming companies. In 2006, when Martin Herdina and Daniel Petri set out to make a virtual marketplace for the trading and purchasing of virtual goods and services, the initial idea was to provide a marketplace for consumers to meet and trade/sell in-game virtual items and services. While this platform proved to be successful with gamers, game operators made it clear that they would rather keep a tighter hold on what was and what was not being traded within their titles. Et Viola, the modern version of today’s fatfoogoo was born with a white label services and technology model. And while there are a number of ‘traditional’ games and titles that we provide our services to, the undeniable growth and popularity of social games, as well as a number of other browser based games, has been certainly something we’ve been looking at for quite a while now.

ff_logo_whiteSpeaking to Justin Smith of insidesocialgames.com last week, Martin states, “We’ve been working with social app and game developers since the end of 2008, as the requirements are very similar to classical online game business models. The first social networking project we did was to provide store, white-label payments and virtual currencies for the avatar engine mEgo, now we are just working with Gogogic on powering Vikings of Thule – and some really exciting social apps/games projects are currently under the hood.”

As Smith states, we are based in Vienna, Austria, miles away from some of traditional games development hotbeds, we’ve also established offices in the UK and the US, with our very own Stevie Case running point on working closely with North American operators/developers.

“Our technology is purely international, so it’s capable of supporting multi-languages, multi currencies, multi-byte character-sets and different VAT-rates,” Herdina says. “However, in terms of business development we are mostly focusing on talking to potential partners in North America and Europe.”

Realizing that while social gaming might share a number of traditional facets, it also takes on it’s own brand of monetization. Specifically, in-game advertising can often be relied on as a primary means of revenues. To this end, we’ve partnered with a number of managed offer platforms in order to facilitate this monetization mechanism. “We treat offers as an alternative payment option, and therefore work with quite a few offer providers in different regions to ensure ideal coverage, like PayBuyPartner, AdParlor, GratisPay, and SponsorPay,” Herdina says.

With this particular attention turned out social games, naturally, facilitating the ease, and variety of payment options is key. We’ve partnered with a number of payment providers specifically focused on social games in order to ensure the highest levels of both client and customer satisfaction. Payment options include credit cards, direct debits, mobile payments, and prepaid cards, to name a few.

“We are expecting our ongoing and future projects in the social app/game space to contribute a significant part to our success in 2010,” Herdina says.

If you’re headed to the Browser Games Forum in Frankfurt this November, Martin will be speaking and available for questions both days.  To have a better look into who we are and what we offer, please visit our solutions section.

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fatfoogoo POWERS E3 AWARD-WINNING TITLE, LEAGUE OF LEGENDS

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009

fatfoogoo, the leading provider of in-game and online commerce ecosystems, today announced it would provide a complete e-commerce solution to Riot Games’ upcoming title League of Legends, available Fall 2009. E3 2009 Game Critics Award nominee and winner of GameTrailers.com best strategy game, League of Legends is a multiplayer online battle arena title that will be one of the first large scale, western developed, core games designed from the start to be available to players for free.

top_logoThe large–scale and attentive support from fatfoogoo will include all facets of e-commerce related features such as: management of two stores – one online within the community site and one in-game, inventory management – storing all items, as well as taking care of pricing, promotions, rebates and vouchers at anytime. Payment processing includes working with all major credit card providers, handling branded pre-paid cards and e-wallet management for dual currencies – Influence Points and Riot Points.

“We’re excited that Riot Games is maximizing fatfoogoo’s online, in-game and complete e-commerce capabilities on a global level,” said Martin Herdina, co-founder and CEO, fatfoogoo. “Our software solution will provide Riot Games the highest quality in virtual goods technology available today with a quick and seamless implementation for the millions of players eagerly anticipating the launch.”

The game will be balanced and competitive for all players. In League of Legends, a player takes on the role of a Summoner, a gifted spell caster gaining Influence and Riot Points. While Influence Points will be earned simply by playing the game and used to unlock content to enhance the character’s power, only Riot Points will be available for purchase with real money. Players who spend money on Riot Points will enjoy additional conveniences and rare customization options.

This system of currencies and virtual goods will be powered exclusively by fatfoogoo’s customizable monetization solution. Offering a comprehensive and global e-commerce solution as well as back-end support for League of Legends, fatfoogoo is a natural choice for Riot Games.

“We set out to create League of Legends as an extremely high quality title and chose fatfoogoo for its complete and powerful e-commerce solutions,” said Brandon Beck, co-founder and CEO, Riot Games. “fatfoogoo’s monetization software solution fits perfectly with our offering, enabling us to focus on delivering a fun and competitive strategy game to players in an extremely accessible way.”

Companies like Riot Games seek like-minded partners such as fatfoogoo when it comes to paving the way for today’s game while keeping an eye out for the future. With a big budget, high quality gameplay and free-to-play accessibility, Riot Games has designed a system that empowers the player with choices that deepen the level of the strategic thinking in the game. In addition to the highly anticipated U.S. launch supported by fatfoogoo, League of Legends will be available in Europe, Fall 2009 and in China, early 2010.

About fatfoogoo
fatfoogoo is the leading in-game commerce ecosystem for monetizing online games, social networks and virtual worlds. fatfoogoo’s solutions allow both publisher-to-publisher and player-to-player financial interaction, as well as traditional user and subscription management. Publishers can choose white label turnkey solutions or individually configured modules. Founded in 2006 by telecommunications veterans, Daniel Petri and Martin Herdina, fatfoogoo is headquartered in Austria and also has offices in the US and the UK. For more information, please visit www.fatfoogoo.com.

About Riot Games
Riot Games, Inc. (www.riotgames.com) is an independent Los Angeles-based video game development company, funded privately and through leading venture capital firms Benchmark and Firstmark. The studio was established in 2006 to develop innovative online next-generation titles for consoles and the PC. Comprised of industry veterans with a shared passion for creating fun, innovative gameplay, the company is currently developing League of Legends, which combines the best elements of the action role-playing and real-time strategy genres into a uniquely replayable and competitive multiplayer experience

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fatfoogoo Powers mEgo’s New Virtual Goods Storefront

Wednesday, June 17th, 2009

fatfoogoo’s Microtransaction Ecosystem Bolsters mEgo’s Avatar Engine,
Tapping into the Rapidly Growing and Lucrative Virtual Goods Market

fatfoogoo, the leading provider of in-game and online commerce ecosystems, today announced it is powering mEgo’s smart virtual goods marketplace, where users can style, animate and accessorize their online personal profile. mEgo is a first-of-its-kind, portable multimedia profile aggregator designed to manage and integrate one’s online identity into a highly personalized avatar through a patent pending user interface.  More than 1.25 million mEgos are currently found on more than 650 social networks, including Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and Flickr.  With added customization and content purchase abilities made possible by fatfoogoo’s commerce technology, mEgo is participating in the highly lucrative market for virtual goods. Already part of a growing trend, the Gartner Group predicts that in 2011, more than 80% of active Internet users will have an avatar.

mego_logo_rasterWith fatfoogoo’s commerce system, mEgo users can purchase a vast number of virtual goods – such as clothes, accessories, background displays, animations and featured content – available in the storefront on mEgo.com or its integrated websites.  The smart storefront allows users to dress by brand, theme, price-point, popularity, auction and rarity.  Through the mEgo user interface, consumers click on the virtual good on the avatar to learn more about the item and click-through to purchase the real-world item.

fatfoogoo is the leading monetization software provider handling microtransactions, subscriptions, virtual currencies, e-wallets, goods trading and more. Its core competencies matched mEgo’s needs – supporting global online transactions with expertise in telecom, an area of growth for mEgo. mEgo and its new virtual goods marketplace will soon be available on mobile devices, including the iPhone, as well on IM services.

“The immense undertaking in managing mEgo’s storefront filled with limitless items, global currency exchange and staying true to a particular brand was easily accomplished with fatfoogoo’s commerce platform,” said Martin Herdina, co-founder and CEO, fatfoogoo. “As the virtual goods industry rapidly expands beyond virtual worlds to casual and hardcore games, online stores and social networks like mEgo, companies depend on our technology and experience to increase the key factors for success – low fraud rate, global economic management and shortened development time. It literally pays to outsource commerce needs.”

By outsourcing the marketplace to fatfoogoo, mEgo was able to quickly have a robust virtual goods offering.  More importantly, with fatfoogoo’s technology and best practices, mEgo can rely on low fraud rates and international monetary compliance.

mego_pay

“We are very excited to work with fatfoogoo and provide our users with a proven and tangible global commerce solution,” said Ariel McNichol, mEgo co-founder and co-CEO.  “Tapping into fatfoogoo’s e-commerce platform, our virtual goods storefront has come to market six months to a year sooner than if we had to build the system ourselves – a win-win for everyone.”

As the company solves the problem of having to create and maintain different profiles on multiple social networks and sites, it keeps its leading edge with the launch of its new online storefront and additional avatar functionality. mEgo is currently developing a contextual suggestion feature that will tap into profile data to offer users relevant utilities, content and products.

In recent news, fatfoogoo announced its partnership with Digital River. Combined, the two companies will provide on-demand e-commerce and in-game commerce for publishers on a global scale. Additionally, fatfoogoo is the exclusive provider of in-game commerce for Rebel Monkey’s virtual world, CampFu, now with more than 100,000 players. Its white-label commerce system is a custom turnkey solution for publishers and developers that want to enhance the online experience for gamers or online users in any industry.

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Video: Interview with Margaret Wallace of Rebel Monkey – creators of CampFu

Friday, May 29th, 2009

I had the fortunate experience to sit down with Margaret Wallace, CEO and Co-founder of Rebel Monkey recently, and discuss not only their hit virtual world CampFu, but where Rebel Monkey comes from, youth oriented virtual worlds, microtransactions and much more!

Speaking to the fact that the youth oriented virtual world space is becoming increasingly crowded, Margaret presents Rebel Monkey’s take on how and why CampFu stands out in the crowd.  “We really wanted to focus on cooperative gaming.  We really wanted to emphasize the idea of the individual player being part of something bigger than themselves.”

Moving on to microtransactions and how they factored into the development of CampFu, Margaret tells me that the inspiration for CampFu came from her and co-founder Nick Fortuno’s views on the success of the free-to-play model in Asia, and how it was a good fit for what they were planning with their virtual world.  “Free to play was definitely the way to go for online.  It’s no longer a question of if microtransactions will take hold in Europe and North America.  …Now everyone’s onboard and trying to figure out their offering.”  Looking forward, Margaret shared with me her thoughts on where microtransactions are headed.  She sees the marketing becoming much more ubiquitous, with not only innovators like Rebel Monkey experimenting with optimizing revenue streams, but also larger portals, and even the old school powerhouse portals migrate (at least in part) to utilizing microtransactions.  Wallace also sees microtransactions becoming much more wide spread across various platforms, and moves towards universal wallets containing currency that can be spent across these platforms.  Using CampFu as a prime example of this prediction, Wallace goes on to tell me that while CampFu is only available on a browser on a computer right now, down the road she envisions an iPhone component that would carry a level of virtual goods offerings that would tie back in to the main ‘home’ of campfu that lives at campfu.com.  Wallace also hinted at an xbox component, all leading back to a total CampFu experience.

Looking ahead, talking about what’s next for Rebel Monkey and CampFu, Wallace tells me that the virtual world is only in it’s infancy right now, with plenty more additions and revisions planned.  A ton of social networking features are planned, and plenty of new virtual goods, both clothing and virtual housing decoration are on the way.  Rebel Monkey will also shortly be launching new games for CamFu players, and focusing on the way teams can form and support themselves, as well as creating API’s for developers to create their own real time cooperative games to be used within CampFu.

Rebel Monkey also isn’t just satisfied with one virtual world, but as Wallace explains, the engine that powers CampFu will be utilized to grow and develop further virtual worlds, making CampFu just one of several virtual world offerings from Rebel Monkey.

Wallace admits that Rebel Monkey is still ironing out the details surrounding a universal currency that would cover all of Rebel Monkey’s planned virtual worlds, but she does say that it has an undeniable appeal.  “We definitely are leaning towards having a universal currency that would work with all of our virtual world offerings, because if we have a player that has FuCash from CampFu why would we want to establish all these hurdles for them to use their FuCash in other properties that we launch.”

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Video: Martin and Geoffrey’s debate from LOGIN 2009

Wednesday, May 20th, 2009

In case you weren’t able to attend the LOGIN conference in Seattle last week, Markeedragon shot and posted the entire debate on Secondary Markets and their effects on MMO’s and virtual worlds between fatfoogoo’s Martin Herdina and President and COO of Electronic Entertainment Design and Research Geoffrey Zatkin.

Running over an hour in length, the video is broken up into 6 components, and well worth the watch as both Martin and Geoffrey offer up some very valid points.  Any and all developers considering introducing secondary markets into their titles should should consider this debate must see TV.

Note: It appears as though Markeedragon did not have direct access to the audio feed, and did not bump up the audio levels while editing.  You’ll need to turn your speakers up a tad to hear the debate correctly.  Audio levels are consistant throughout the entire hour.

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