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In his opening keynote at the London Games Festival last night Bigpoint CEO Heiko Hubertz shrugged off the Facebook goldfish.
He warned that although companies are flocking to the social games space, specifically on Facebook, they are missing the point.
Facebook games "continue to lose players" he said, saying the marketplace for social games on the site has become too crowded, too quickly, and is full of clones.
It’s a cut-throat world where "you have to spend a lot of money on advertising to get the users," he said.
Hubertz also isn’t a fan of Facebook Credits – the new virtual currency the site has launched to pay for virtual items.
Those that use Credits owe Facebook a chunk of their margins.
"But if you have to pay 30 per cent of your revenue to Facebook you are in trouble – I don’t know anyone with margins that high."
Ultimately, Hubertz said that Facebook is just one option on the market – but that all companies looking to be successful in the online space need to be everywhere; browsers, mobile, and social networks.
He should know – Bigpoint was one of the first businesses to support free to play games – well before Facebook even existed. It has 150m users across 60 active games in 30 languages.
