Raptr, the social network for people who like to play and discover games, is partnering with several big-name gaming companies to license and distribute games and spread its reach. The Raptr Partners Program includes Sony Online Entertainment, NHN USA, Gala-Net as well as hardware companies Razer and Bigfoot Networks. Raptr says that its reach could potentially exceed over 10 million players with these relationships.
Users interact with Raptr just as they would on a social network like Facebook, except everything revolves around playing games. They get the ability to know when and what games their friends are playing across various gaming platforms as well as the ability to instant message with their friends. Users can also share their stats, rankings, achievements, and characters with friends. And they can automatically broadcast their gaming activity to their friends on Raptr and other social sites including Facebook and Twitter. Raptr Partners Program will give Raptr access to deeper data and content and will allow partner companies to work with Raptr APIs as well. The deeper data creates a better experience for users and for gaming companies. The partnerships will also allow Raptr to distribute co-branded games to users and will offer partners a way to access Raptr’s social gaming platform and potentially have their games be broadcast over several social networks.
Raptr has the potential to not only associate with some big gaming brands but to also extend its reach as a popular gaming platform. Raptr will work with Sony to add a number of titles from Sony’s catalog of subscription-based and free-to-play PC games. Gala-Net will distribute Raptr to players of its games on its gPotato portal and GamesCampus will work to distribute Raptr on games hosted at its sports-focused portal. Raptr will also be bundled with the Bigfoot Network’s Killer NIC gaming network cards.
As we wrote in our review of Raptr last year, Raptr is positioning itself as a central hub for social networking and gaming to integrate into one platform. And these partnerships should only help the network add more compelling games and reach more gamers. But we also wonder whether gamers will take the time to actually interact with the social networking features and create a profile on the network.