Hong Kong-based publisher 6waves today announced partnerships with 32 social game developers including Kabam, Game Insight and Large Animal. 6waves also announced a partnership with Atari.

According to Jim Wilson, CEO of Atari, the company hopes to leverage 6waves track record as a successful social games publisher to bring Atari’s world-renowned game franchises to social networks in the near future. “Discoverability and user acquisitions are ever-increasing challenges facing social games today, so partnering with 6waves was the logical choice for us,” Wilson said.

Earlier this month 6waves shared news of re-focusing the company on publishing social and mobile games as well as increasing traction in China.

“The momentum that we have gained in both mobile and social in 2012 should send a clear signal to the industry: we are committed to continuing our growth,” said Jim Ying, SVP Publishing of 6waves in the press statement. “2012 will see our portfolio expand significantly in all key genres. We couldn’t be happier to welcome so many exciting independent developers to our fold, as well as a powerhouse brand like Atari.”

Apart from a lot of  Chinese developers there are quite a few Russian companies such as Game Insight, Drimmi and Chiwawa Games as well as UK-based Enteraction among the list of newly signed developers.

6waves Lolapps today announced its acquisition of Beijing-based social gaming company Smartron5. The acquisition marks 6waves Lolapps’ continued expansion into the Asian market adding to its existing Hong Kong and Tokyo offices.

“The Asian market is complex and the Smartron5 team brings western-production values with a deep understanding of how to be successful in China,” said Rex NG, CEO of 6waves Lolapps.”
6waves Lolapps’ Asian presence now leaps to more than 75 people, globally the company now employs 170 employees.

Smartron5’s CEO, Gage Galinger will become 6waves Lolapps’ Vice President of Content Development and will head up operations in China. The Smartron5 team will be focused on product development for the local social and mobile market.

Smartron5, backed by London listed private equity group Origo PLC, focuses on social games for Asian and international social networks. The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Akamai Technologies Hong Kong Limited, provider of cloud optimization services, today announced that 6waves Inc., a leading international publisher and developer of gaming applications, is leveraging Akamai’s Dynamic Site Delivery solutions. These will enable 6waves to enhance the delivery of its social media games and applications to social networking platforms, including Facebook and Yabage in Japan. Akamai supports 6waves in the delivery of some of the most popular social games including Ravenwood Fair, Mystery Manor, Mall World, and Resort World, which attract 15.9 million monthly active users alone.With this partnership 6waves aims to improve the user experience by reducing the game load time and ensuring a high level of performance, regardless of where the user is located.

In addition, Akamai’s platform gives 6waves the ability to scale quickly and enter new markets, without the need to deploy any new hardware or software. “Through partnerships with top developers, 6waves aims to publish the next generation of social games to cover every genre, language, and platform to reach a global audience,” said Rex Ng, Chief Executive Officer, 6waves. “With the rapid growth of game developers and many popular game titles, the social gaming industry is becoming increasingly competitive. Akamai’s support enables us to work with game developers to provide a fast, reliable and high quality social gaming experience to players around the world.” 6waves’ business model provides distribution and monetization solutions for developers by delivering high quality social games to its global network of 50 million monthly active players. Currently 35 per cent of 6waves users are in Asia, 30 per cent in the United States, 25 per cent in Europe and the remaining 10 per cent spread across the rest of the World.

“The success of 6waves’ business is dependent on the quality and speed at which it delivers its social games to the end-user. The consumer’s experience is critical – if it takes too long to download a game, users won’t come back,” said Betty Lin, Regional Manager, Hong Kong and Taiwan, Akamai Technologies Hong Kong Limited. “As 6waves continues to grow globally, Akamai will help the company overcome the challenges and limits of the public Internet to deliver all of its content across its global platform. This will allow the team at 6waves to focus on its expansion strategy and new initiatives, without having to worry about the performance of the IT infrastructure.”

India’s largest online gaming portal Zapak has joined hands with 6waves, a leading international publisher and developer of Facebook games. Through this association Zapak will be the marketing and payment partner for 6waves games in India. Zapak will publish all 6waves games to Indian users which will include hits like Mall World. So far Zapak was focused on providing casual games to their 7 million registered users. Currently the payment gateways available for Zapak games only allow to pay with international credit cards. Zapak announced to integrate all local payment options like credit cards, netbanking and Zapak’s own virtual currency to facilitate easier item selling on 6waves games. According to Appdata, 6waves games have over 17 million users on Facebook. Zapak CEO Rohit Sharma, commenting on the launch of social games: “Zapak is synonymous with providing quality world class content to its users. Many of our users visit Facebook frequently and this association with 6waves will offer them with an array of new entertaining and engaging games. We aim to bring the world’s best social game content to Indian users like we did on Zapak.com.” 6waves CEO Rex Ng commented “International markets have always been a prime focus for 6waves. Working with Zapak, the leading gaming company in India, we aim to bring the best social gaming experience to our Indian users.”