Chartboost, the fast-growing cross-promotion network for mobile game developers, is adding another revenue stream to its belt. It’s launching a new back-end service that will power in-app purchases and stores inside mobile games.
The company says the product, Chartboost Store, will make it easier for studios to add new items and pricing on the fly, instead of having to go through a time-consuming update process.
The new store service also gives developers analytics capabilities so they can track which items and price points perform the best. Many of the biggest game developers already have built similar technology in-house to manage their stores, but smaller developers don’t have the resources to do this.
The company says there are five games already live with the store today, including Retro Dreamer’s Ice Cream Drop, Sniderware’s Eric’s Sudoku, Dobsoft’s Run & Gun, Trivial Technology’s Word Buster, and Naquatic’s Basketball Showdown. The store is in closed beta for iOS, Android and Unity. and can apply for the beta
It’s free for now, but Chartboost will ask for a 10 percent revenue share when the product comes out for a full launch later this year. That means after Apple or Google Play’s 30 percent cut, Chartboost will take a 10 percent share on top of that.
Chartboost, which raised $19 million in a round led by Sequoia Capital this year, has grown a network that includes more than 16,000 games by largely giving its services away for free. It makes tools for developers to cross-promote games within their own network, and arranges direct deals between different developers to trade ads for each other’s work. They make money by managing remnant advertising inventory in the network, which reaches 300 million unique monthly devices and contributes to more than eight billion game sessions per month.