YoYo Games

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YoYo Games
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Key Information
Founder:	The YoYo Games group
Founded in:	2007
Key People:	Sandy Duncan Mark Overmars James North-Hearn Michel Cassius Spencer Hyman
Other
Type:	Partnership Company number 05260718
Website:	http://www.yoyogames.com/

On January 26, 2007, Mark Overmars announced that he would be working with a company in the UK named YoYo Games.^[1] The company, headed by CEO Sandy Duncan (ex Vice President of Xbox Europe),^[2] was founded to support the future development of Game Maker, and to develop a community for developers and casual games players. The motive behind the cooperation is that it would bring faster and better development to Game Maker, as well as provide a better website for its users. The website is a community in which users can upload, share, and play their created games and those made by others while having the ability to review and discuss these games, and games in development on the website. It will also provide a much extended help system and support for the sharing of resources. YoYo Games is recreating the GMC (Game Maker Community) and YoYo Games has published Game Maker 7. As of April 28, 2007, the YoYo Games Web site has been officially released to the public (in beta).^[3]

YoYo Games provide a free hosting service for any Game Maker games - by early January, 2008, over 11,000 user generated games had been uploaded. The website also has an instant play feature so people can play games online, as well as offering downloads on all content.

On January 10th, 2008, YoYo Games concluded it's first Game Maker competition ^[4], awarding $1750 in prizes to the three winning developers, and has promised similar contests in the near future. On 1st February, 2008, YoYoGames announced the second competition, based on the theme of 'Ancient Civilizations' with total prize money of $1790.