RIM acquires social-gaming outfit Scoreloop

In a clear bid to make up ground lost to Android and iOS devices, embattled Blackberry maker Research in Motion (RIM) has announced its acquisition of German social-gaming outfit Scoreloop. With sales of the Blackberry PlayBook reported to be less than stellar, commentators are suggesting that Scoreloop’s in-app billing capabilities played a hand in the deal as RIM looks to play catch-up in an increasingly cut throat apps market.

According to a post on RIM’s developer blog, VP of developer relations Tyler Lessard said that the company had “recently enabled our developers to create social app experiences through our BBM Social Platform and have seen some very innovative applications result from that.” Lessard added that the company was looking forward to working with Scoreloop to “provide tools that will further enable our developer community to take gaming to a new level of social integration on the Blackberry platform.”

Scoreloop offers developers a customisable, cross-platform social mobile toolkit, including in-app billing, virtual currencies and enhanced distribution. In March this year, the company announced its Go Android partnership programme aimed at helping iOS developers to port their games to the Android OS. In April, the company followed up with an announcement of a beta SDK for Windows Phone 7; the company already supports Samsung’s bada. The Windows SDK was initially launched on a restricted access basis to key developers, but it is envisaged that it will eventually be open to all comers.