Playdom takes CrowdStar's place as third-largest Facebook game developer

New data from Facebook app tracker AppData this week shows that Playdom has edged out competitor Crowdstar to become the third-largest developer of Facebook games, as measured by number of monthly average users across all published games. Playdom's 43.8 million users just edged out CrowdStar's 43.3 million, according to the site.

While massive player gains for new Playdom games such City of Wonder and Market Street helped fuel the company's achievement, a precipitous drop in users for CrowdStar's games also contributed to the switch in positions. The Happy Aquarium maker lost more than 9 million aggregate monthly users for its games in the last week, though the bulk of the drop came in a single day (Aug. 27), suggesting it may have had more to do with changes in Facebook's statistics reporting than any actual player exodus.

Regardless, the jump into the top three is good news for Playdom owner Disney, which has seen their acquisition's player base grow by roughly 10% in the month since their purchase. Still, the company will have to grow more than 25% more to challenge the current position of No. 2 developer Electronic Arts, or a whopping 417% if it wants to match industry-leader Zynga's current position.

[Via InsideSocialGames]