Rebellion creates social games division

Games developer Rebellion is to create its own division dealing exclusively with games for social media platforms.

The move comes on the back of the beta launch of its free-to-play Evil Genius game for Facebook. Based on the critically acclaimed and much loved PC title, Evil Genius challenges Facebook users to create their own evil empires, undertake dastardly missions and recruit friends into their evil syndicates.

The Oxford-based developer is best known for its best-selling title Aliens Vs. Predator – which became Sega’s fastest selling title of 2010 – as well as The Simpsons Game for Electronic Arts and such critical successes as Sniper Elite and Rogue Trooper.

Evil Genius has been regularly updated and expanded since its beta release last year, with Valentine’s Day-themed content and exciting new developments to come in March.

Jason Kingsley, CEO of Rebellion, said:
“The release of Evil Genius has given us an appetite to look at other opportunities in the area. One thing that has become increasingly apparent over the last few years is that gamers can’t be defined as just people who own consoles – people who use social media like Facebook or use smart phones all play games and this is an exciting new opportunity that we want to explore.”

Chris Kingsley, CTO of Rebellion, said:
“Evil Genius has been a fun and rewarding project for us and has proved that there is a lot of interest out there for games that don’t run on traditional platforms. Thanks to the internal technology we use and the great skills of our team here, we can bring our 18 years of console and PC games experience to this sector and produce games that reach new players who would never consider themselves to be gamers.”