We may earn a commission when you buy through links in our articles. Learn more.

Playfire to merge with GreenManGaming: what it means for gamers

Check_this_gamification_It_says_we_joined_Playfire_in_July_2008_That_was_like_four_years_ago

Anyone got a Playfire account? It glues together your Steam, Xbox and PSNIds and lets you have one combined friend and achievement feed. A big fancy trophy cabinet. Playfire started life as a social network for gamers, when the term Facebook for gamers meant something.

Now we know what they’re doing next… helping that audience buy and trade games. They’ve just merged with Green Man Gaming (Disclosure: GMG is PCGamesN.com’s e-commerce partner).

It’ll be interesting to see what this mean. If GMG is smart they’ll keep developing the platform and use it as a trading platform.

On the issue of continuing development Kieran O’Neill the Founder of Playfire, said: “The deal will give us the chance to expand and improve Playfire, while being able to capitalize on the large community we have built. There are so many things we want to do in 2012 and this deal will allow us to execute faster.” Key to the success will be improvements to of the tech. Gamespy and XFire were both platforms bought by other businesses who failed to keep pace with the times. The news of delivering extra functionality has been well recieved so far on the Playfire blog.

On the issue of creating a more dynamic market for games there are two things that can happen with Green Man Gaming – first there are possibilities around GMG extending its reach into console gaming (Playfire has a big Xbox and PS3 audience). More exciting is what happens when you throw a million people at the games download trading market, with single sign-on to get onto Green Man Gaming. Paul Sulyok, Managing Director, Green Man Gaming, was talking up prospects for trading digital games last week. On the merger Sulyok said. “We’ve long been fans of Playfire – its vibrant community of gamers have bought the service to life. As part of Green Man Gaming, we’re committed to growing Playfire and building on its many successes. We’ll be working closely to introduce new features, and will unite Green Man’s consumers with Playfire’s community to offer exclusive content and incentives for members.”