Facebook shutters LOLapps games from requests, Ravenwood Fair lives on

Critter Island Request Fail
Since the recent LOLapps debacle on Facebook after the Wall Street Journal's investigative report, the company seemed to be in good shape, but today it was discovered by Inside Social Games that something has changed for the worse about LOLapps' games. As it turns out, every one of the developer's games aside from Ravenwood Fair is no longer able to process Facebook Requests of any kind.

Because LOLapps appears to be one of the few app developers that Facebook has suspended from viral channels for the next sixth months, according to Inside Social Games, players of games like Critter Island will not be able to send each other gifts or request new friends for quite some time. However, Ravenwood Fair, LOLapps' brand new game co-developed by Doom-creator John Romero, is still up and running on all cylinders. This is most likely because the game released after the whole sordid affair, not to mention it's already the company's fourth most popular game in less than a month with over 1.7 million players monthly, according to AppData.

It seems that Facebook is less interested in killing off LOLapps than in teaching the studio a lesson in fair business. Unfortunately for fans of LOLapps legacy games, their experience will be severely hindered considering sharing is a vital feature to almost all social games. Worse even is the developer's ability to grow these games virally through friend requests and Discovery Stories, which will be all but nonexistent for a long time. In other words, expect to find quite a lot of friends in Ravenwood Fair in the near future (i.e. now).

Kobe Bryant is making a Facebook game?

When Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant isn't on the court, appearing in explosive TV ads or running his own web show he's making... Facebook games? No, your eyes do not deceive you--Kobe Bryant is teaming up with Endemol USA, a production company specializing in entertainment programming and behind his recent web show Dream Makers: Kobe Bryant, to break into the world of Facebook gaming.

Kobe Bryant, who will play a key role in development of the game, says, "I'm excited to partner with Endemol USA and 6waves to bring unprecedented entertainment to gaming fans worldwide."

The game will be published by 6waves, known for recent Facebook hits like Ravenwood Fair and Big Business, and will give players the opportunity to win real prizes like memorabilia signed by Bryant himself and tickets to a Lakers game. According to Endemol, the game may also feature elements from Dream Makers, making what it calls "a ground-breaking multi-media social game." Other than that, details are scarce on how exactly the game will play or what it will be titled. Just know that Kobe Bryant is treading new ground as the first athlete to have a Facebook game be all about him. And would a star like Bryant have it any other way?

Disney-branded Facebook games coming in 2012, Playdom head says

Can we all just say, “finally?” During a panel named “The Rise of Social Games” at the f8 Facebook Developers Conference in San Francisco, Disney Interactive and Playdom head John Pleasants revealed that two to four Facebook games surrounding Disney xd brands will hit Facebook in 2012. The general topic of the panel was the fact that branded social games are taking off.

Pleasants was joined on the panel by Kabam CEO Kevin Chou, EA Interactive head Barry Cottle and Zynga CBO Owen Van Natta. Facebook director of games partnerships Sean Ryan moderated the panel with the preface that branded games will take over the Facebook platform. And he might be right: EA just released The Sims Social, Zynga will soon re-brand its new Adventure World with Indiana Jones and Kabam recently announced The Godfather: Five Families.

Playdom, which Disney acquired in July 2010 for a whopping $740 million, is ahead of the pack with two branded games on Facebook: ESPNU College Town and ESPN Sports Bar & Grill. Both games performed well, thanks to advertising through the ESPN TV network. While Disney owns the ESPN brand, notice how neither of those actually involve the insanely popular Disney characters we’ve come to love.

Honestly, we’re surprised this didn’t happen sooner. Consider this: Disney has its own cable TV channel through which it could, in theory, advertise whatever it wants. Pleasants didn’t get into why it’s taken this long for disney channel games to throw its cast of characters into Facebook games, but did reveal the power of the Disney name.

Gnome Town, which Playdom launched in the summer–and we enjoyed quite a bit–peaked at 530,000 daily players. But just plopping the Disney logo on top of the existing one made users more likely to spend in the game just through trust of the company’s name, according to Pleasants. “We think it’s an advantage, if you put game play first,” Pleasants said.

It’s comforting to hear this emphasized by these developers. (Kabam’s Chou shared the same sentiment.) Branded games on Facebook are OK in my book, but the last thing anyone wants to see is the genre become a branding machine.

Finally, all future Facebook privacy changes will be opt-in, not opt-out

Facebook games and privacy have been something of, well, we'll just say it: a pain in the ass more times than not. Even as recently as this summer, changes to the games platform had players scrambling to protect their privacy. And while we almost always find workarounds, it simply shouldn't have to be that way. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg finally (if reluctantly) agrees with that.

From this day forward, all changes to Facebook that might affect users' privacy will be opt-in, meaning users will have to agree to the change before it can take place within their profile or an app. According to a statement made by the US Federal Trade Commission, Facebook is "required to obtain consumers' affirmative express consent before enacting changes that override their privacy preferences."

This settlement is the result of charges issued against Facebook by the FTC that the company "deceived consumers by telling them they could keep their information on Facebook private, and then repeatedly allowing it to be shared and made public." Now, the company must be audited by third-party privacy firms every two years to ensure that Facebook holds a privacy program that meets the FTC's order.

Of course, this means that it will be much more difficult for Facebook to push changes like, say, the Facebook Games Ticker, which blasts in-game activities without the player so much as clicking a "Share" button. Sure, this likely means that no future Facebook change will ever reach 100 percent of its users. But we also don't like it when everyone and their mother knows exactly when we log into CastleVille every day.

[Via TechCrunch]

Are you behind these changes to Facebook? Have you ever been a victim to Facebook's changes to your privacy when it comes to gaming?