Social Poker maker Moblyng kicks the bucket, blames poor monetization

It's a real shame, too, because as VentureBeat (VB) puts it, Moblyng was rather ahead of its time in social games. The HTML5-focused creator of games like Social Poker Live and Word Racer Live has shut down. Moblyng founder and CEO Stewart Putney confirmed the closure, which leaves 20 staffers without jobs. "We did not monetize enough to stay in business," Putney told VB.

While the rest of the social games world was still fooling around with Flash (the primary technology used to create and play social games), Moblyng focused on HTML5, an emergent web development technology often used to make the same social games that work on both mobile devices and computer browsers. Unfortunately, the Redwood City, Calif.-based developer just couldn't put a solid business model in place before its player base started growing.

Shortly before its unfortunate shut down, Moblyng was a leading partner in the launch of Facebook's HTML5-heavy mobile app platform. The company released HTML5 games along with Zynga, wooga and Storm8 that were playable within Facebook for iPhone and Android. Sadly, this is just one of many social gaming shut downs within the past six months, with Meteor Games and Metrogames looking at imminent closure.

"I remain very confident HTML5 will be a great platform for social games and media, it is simply a question of when," Putney told VB. "We just unleashed a group of kick-ass HTML5-focused professionals into the market, so my hope is they will help the HTML5 ecosystem develop that much faster."

Are you bummed to see Moblyng go? Do you agree that HTML5 is the future of social games? Which HTML5 social games have you tried? Sound off in the comments. Add Comment.