Amazon Now Offers In-App Purchasing Services To PC Game Developers

Amazon has always been a huge player in games retail, but the company is quickly becoming a major player in game development as well. It’s already heavily involved in mobile game development with a number of helpful APIs like GameCenter. Now the retail giant is starting to focus on its free-to-play PC gaming service again that started with Game Connect.

Amazon announced today that its in-app purchasing service is now available to PC, Mac and Web-based game developers. In short, gamers will be able to use their Amazon account to buy stuff in games that use the company’s Game Connect service.

“We’re passionate about making game developers successful, and we’ll continue to build services that make monetization easier and remove undifferentiated heavy lifting from developers,” said Mike Frazzini, Director Amazon Games. “Game developers build games that are used across multiple platforms and mediums. In-App Purchasing for Mac, PC and Web-based games is our latest service that helps game developers grow their business and increase their customer-base. For years, Amazon has focused on making the online shopping experience as frictionless as possible, and we are excited to share this expertise and technology so that game developers can offer customers this same great experience.”

Here’s the benefits of using Amazon’s new service, according to Amazon:

Customers can use any credit card, gift certificate or promotional credit associated with their current Amazon account to purchase in-app items—making it simple and low friction for customers to purchase content and leading to higher sales and increased conversion.

Developers automatically have access to Amazon’s proven fraud detection technology, thereby reducing their exposure to fraud.

All transactions are supported by Amazon’s world-class, top-rated Customer Service to provide customers with the very best purchasing experience.

To help developers with game discovery and marketing, in-app items will automatically be available on Amazon.com, and in-app purchases can show up on best seller lists, recommendations and merchandising campaigns, helping customers discover new games and items, while adding another point of engagement for existing players.

The biggest benefit to developers is access to Amazon’s powerful retail presence. Millions of potential players flow through Amazon’s Web store every day, and they just might be compelled to check a game out after seeing a listing for an in-game item. Everything else is pretty standard fare that’s offered by other in-app purchasing services.

The new service is an extension of Amazon’s Game Connect service, and as such, only requires a few steps to set everything up. Developers who want to join up with Game Connect will want to check out Amazon’s help page. All the information you need is there.