PopCap Games, one of the world’s largest publishers in the growing ‘casual games’ category, is to host its entire infrastructure for serving international markets out of Ireland.
The company, which is headquartered in Seattle and recently opened an international operations office at the Digital Hub in Dublin, is expanding and has signed a deal with Servecentric to provide its first non-US data centre.
The Irish-owned data centre and collocation provider Servecentric is to host and support the entire online gaming platform for PopCap’s international markets. PopCap’s website, at www.popcap.com, provides 31 games that can be played free of charge via the user’s web browser or downloaded as deluxe versions. The games include a mix of puzzles, word games and arcade titles including Bejeweled 2, Zuma, Chuzzle, Bookworm and Insaniquarium.
Casual games are online games that work across PCs, Macs, games consoles, mobile phones and other devices. They appeal to men and women and an estimated 100 million people per month are said to play them.
PopCap’s Dublin office acts as a development and support centre for its international operations and European business. Its choice of Servecentric, which is based at Blanchardstown Corporate Park in Dublin, is the games firm’s first such hosting facility outside the US and is part of an international expansion drive backed by a multimillion dollar investment.
By moving into Europe and taking advantage of Servecentric’s connectivity partnerships with multiple ISPs and telecoms providers, PopCap expects it will be able to provide even faster download times to European users and expects to grow its business significantly in the region.
“This is one of the fastest growing sectors in interactive entertainment and we anticipate that up to one million people per month will play games on PopCap’s new European online platform,” said Jason O’Conaill, sales and marketing director, Servecentric.
By Gordon Smith
