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Unity Technologies, which makes the popular game engine Unity, has acquired Applifier, the maker of a tool called Everyplay that lets users share and record videos of mobile games.
Everyplay launched last year out of Finland, and is predicated on the idea that you’ll be more likely to discover and download a mobile game if you see a friend playing that game first. The developers who added Everyplay to their games could then automatically record gameplay and encourage players to share those recordings to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter or Everyplay’s own app and social network.
Soon, that same functionality will come to the Unity engine, which provides cross-platform tools, assets and shortcuts to game developers. Some of the best-known titles made with Unity include the Temple Run games, Kerbal Space Program and the Dead Trigger games. The company estimates that 15 to 20 million mobile games built with its engine are downloaded each day.
In an interview with Re/code, Unity CEO David Helgason said there are two “life or death challenges” in making a game: Developing it, and connecting with an audience. Unity was good at the first challenge, while Everyplay was good at the second, he said.
“Everyplay changes gaming in the same way that instant replay changes sports,” Helgason said. “It has a significant impact on discovery.”
This is the second time in as many weeks that a major company has thrown its weight behind the sharing of videos of mobile games. Game streaming service Twitch just announced the mobile version of its tools, but Applifier CEO Jussi Laakkonen said Twitch is “not a concern” because it mainly deals in live video while Everyplay is still focused on videos that may be shared and watched later.
Everyplay currently has more than six million registered users, and was used to share 650,000 videos in February, Helgason added. At least 7.5 percent of the installs for the mobile version of hit indie game Stair Dismount, Laakkonen said, can be traced back to Everyplay video shares.
For the time being, Everyplay will continue to have its own software development kit, or SDK, for game companies to use, which Applifier claims takes 2 minutes to install on top of a game. But over time, Laakkonen said, the recording features will be more deeply integrated into Unity itself so that choosing to let players record gameplay will take 10 seconds, “or however long it takes to check a box.”
The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, but when asked about its size, Laakkonen offered the cryptic reply, “That’s no moon!” Helgason said the deal had been in the works for a few months.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
