Exit Games is a platform service provider for the development of online multiplayer games. It was founded in 2003 and has 25 employees, most of whom work in Hamburg, Germany, where the company has its headquarters.

Robert Boehm, Executive Vice President Sales and Marketing at Exit Games, says the initial idea when starting the company was to provide a roaming service for gaming, which was not available at the time.

“Roaming is a critical success factor for gaming, because of its social character. People want to play with each other irrespective of what operators they subscribe to, or which country they live in,” Boehm says.
Today Exit Games is perhaps best known for Neutron, a managed turnkey service designed for creating connected, social and community-based games and applications.

“Neutron is heavily used by several customers in the entertainment industry, such as game publishers like Vivendi Games Mobile, Disney, Konami and Taito,” Boehm says. “We provide Neutron as a hosted service so that the customer can concentrate on running and developing games and does not have to bother about the server side of the operation.”

Besides the gaming industry, Exit Games also targets infrastructure providers, either as customers or as partners, as in its relationship with Ericsson.

“We share with Ericsson a common vision that community gaming is a vital part of the whole mobile services ecosystem,” Boehm says. “We also like Ericsson’s program for managing the relationship with developers. And of course, Ericsson’s global reach is very beneficial to us and helps us realize our vision of worldwide game roaming.”

Exit Games started looking at IMS in 2006, Boehm says: “We saw its potential as a great enabler for our game roaming idea, providing a standardized system to build on. If every carrier would apply its own standards for multiplayer gaming, then game roaming wouldn’t work, or require a huge effort to implement.

“For sure, social gaming could not take off without the support of a standardized technology such as IMS, of which two very important features are unique user identity and user presences, making it easy to invite others to play with you.”

With every new technology market penetration is important, Boehm says, so Exit Games has put a lot of efforts into providing a solution that enables IMS and non-IMS end users to play with each other. 
“In the end, what makes multiplayer gaming a success is the content. Our job is to provide great features and functionality, such as easy-to-use software development kits, for game developers to exploit in a creative and innovative way,” Boehm says.

Rolf Carlsson, head of Operations at Ericsson Developer Connection, says: “Exit Games’ strengths are that they combine IMS and non-IMS in the same platform, and have established relationships with game developers. Exit Games provides a hosted environment that makes it easy for operators to interact and start offering a game in an app store buildup.”

By Benny Ritzén

Exit Games
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