WildTangent

Infobox Company
company_name = WildTangent
company_logo =
company_type = Private
foundation = Washington (1998)
location_city =
location_country =
location = 18578 NE 67th Court, Bldg. 5, Redmond, WA 98052
key_people = Alex St. John
industry = Online/Video Games Developer/Publisher/Distributor
products = See the list or visit website
revenue =
operating_income =
net_income =
num_employees =
homepage = [http://www.wildtangent.com/ WildTangent.com]

WildTangent is a game network, privately held in the US that exclusively powers game services for PC manufacturers such as HP, Dell, Toshiba, Lenovo and Gateway. Collectively, WildTangent’s owned and operated service reaches over 20 million monthly gamers in the US and Europe with a catalog of more than 600 games from nearly 100 developers.

The company also manages the premium advertising sales for a group of vertical gaming properties comprised of MMOGs and game portals including PopCap.com, FreeOnlineGames, Jagex’s Runescape and FunOrb properties, as well as Artix’s AdventureQuest, DragonFable and MechQuest properties.

As a whole, the network reaches more than 50 million users worldwide, with 21 million of those residing in the US.

The company owns a patent portfolio covering in-game advertising and game delivery technologies and operates CPM-based advertising campaigns for more than 50 US brands.

WildTangent monetizes online game play through a combination of digital retail purchase, subscription, advertising and micro-transactions using a proprietary micro-currency solution called WildCoins.

WildCoins

WildCoins are a micro-currency WildTangent launched in the fall of 2006 designed to give gamers another way to pay for game play other than full retail purchase. WildCoins are much like quarters used at a traditional arcade. Gamers can purchase WildCoins and use them to play any games on the network. Each time the gamer inserts the required number of coins, he or she can play the game for up to 24 hours, or until they voluntarily exit the game, without having to use more WildCoins.

Advertisers can also purchase WildCoins and sponsor free game sessions. If the gamer agrees to see a short video advertisement while the game is loading, the advertiser will insert WildCoins making the game free to the player.

Games

Approximately 30 of the more than 600 games were produced by the company's own WildTangent Game Studios. The rest of the game on the WildTangent Game Network are from other game developers and publishers.

Originally, WildTangent produced advergames for various companies, including Nike, Coke, and Ford. The company no longer develops advergames. WildTangent used to be a publisher of Sandlot Games. But now, it's only the distributor due to the rebrand, new website and new corporating of Sandlot Games.

Criticism

Users have complained that the company's products have an adverse effect on their PC's performance or are intrusive to the user's experience. [http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2331290,00.asp] The magazine PC World wrote in 2004 that although the program was "not very" evil, some privacy complaints were justified as the program's user manual states that it may collect name, address, phone number, e-mail, and other contact information without the user's consent and could distribute the collected information with the user's consent. Concerns were also raised about the software's self-updating feature. [http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1601598,00.asp] Some popular antispyware programs detect the program during their scans, such as Spybot which classifies it as a potentially unwanted program. [http://www.safer-networking.org/en/threats/234.html] [http://www.safer-networking.org/en/updatehistory/2008-08-27.html]

Users in the past have complained that the WildTangent software was difficult to uninstall, [http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?threadid=74109] although the company packages an uninstaller with the program. To remove WildTangent, you can use the Add/Remove functionality in Windows or any number of third-party tools such as "RootkitRevealer", or "HijackThis".

ee also

* Wanako Studios
* Sandlot Games

References

External links

* [http://www.wildtangent.com/home.html| WildTangent Home Page]
* [http://www.pchell.com/support/wildtangent.shtml PCHell.com article on how to remove WildTangent]