Zylom

Last updated March 01, 2019

Zylom is a distributor of casual games for PC and Mac computers, as well as for devices like mobile phones and tablets. Based in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, Zylom delivers casual games throughout Europe. Zylom offers both online and downloadable games through its own direct-to-consumer website www.zylom.com, which has more than 800 different games to play and download. It also has a mobile website with games for tablets and mobile devices. Zylom also develops and publishes several of its own popular casual games, such as the Delicious series, the Campfire Legends series, and Heart’s Medicine.

A casual game is a video game targeted at or used by casual gamers. Casual games may exhibit any type of gameplay or genre. They are typically distinguished by simple rules and by reduced demands on time and learned skill, in contrast to more complex hardcore games. They typically impose low production and distribution costs on the producer.

Eindhoven is the fifth-largest city and a municipality of the Netherlands. It had a population of 229,126 in 2018, making it the largest city in the province of North Brabant, although 's-Hertogenbosch is its capital. Eindhoven was originally located at the confluence of the Dommel and Gender.

The Netherlands is a country located mainly in Northwestern Europe. The European portion of the Netherlands consists of twelve separate provinces that border Germany to the east, Belgium to the south, and the North Sea to the northwest, with maritime borders in the North Sea with Belgium, Germany and the United Kingdom. Including three island territories in the Caribbean Sea—Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba— it forms a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The official language is Dutch, but a secondary official language in the province of Friesland is West Frisian.

Games

The games on the Zylom website are divided into online games and downloadable games. The online versions of the game are only trials, with various restrictions for the player (such as shortened time period or levels he/she can play) unless he/she purchases the full game.

Although Zylom.com is not a free gaming site, it still uses third-party ads for its online trial games. The advertising consist of not only regular images and flash animations, but also constant in-game ads. These ads pause the trial of the game for an amount of time while displaying themselves, and the player is forced to wait until the ad finishes before returning to the game. This form of advertising during gameplay can easily irritate some players and spoil their gaming experience.

The downloadable versions of games are called Deluxe games. These games are not for free, but only available through direct payment to the site, or by having a paid subscription plan. A player can still download and use a trial of a game, in which they can only play the game for 30 minutes. As in many vendors' offers, the way this site presents its downloadable trials may be confusing for some people, meaning that the player can be fooled that they are about to actually download a full, unrestricted game for free.

Zylom claims to release new online and download games every week. Most of the games offered by Zylom are, according to them, fully localized in 8 languages (English, French, Spanish, German, Dutch, Swedish, Italian and Portuguese).

English is a West Germanic language that was first spoken in early medieval England and eventually became a global lingua franca. Named after the Angles, one of the Germanic tribes that migrated to the area of Great Britain that would later take their name, England, both names ultimately deriving from the Anglia peninsula in the Baltic Sea. It is closely related to Frisian and Low Saxon, and its vocabulary has been significantly influenced by other Germanic languages, particularly Norse, and to a greater extent Latin and French.

French is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. It descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, as did all Romance languages. French evolved from Gallo-Romance, the spoken Latin in Gaul, and more specifically in Northern Gaul. Its closest relatives are the other langues d'oïl—languages historically spoken in northern France and in southern Belgium, which French (Francien) has largely supplanted. French was also influenced by native Celtic languages of Northern Roman Gaul like Gallia Belgica and by the (Germanic) Frankish language of the post-Roman Frankish invaders. Today, owing to France's past overseas expansion, there are numerous French-based creole languages, most notably Haitian Creole. A French-speaking person or nation may be referred to as Francophone in both English and French.

Spanish or Castilian, is a Western Romance language that originated in the Castile region of Spain and today has hundreds of millions of native speakers in the Americas and Spain. It is a global language and the world's second-most spoken native language, after Mandarin Chinese.

The main casual game categories offered are:

3-in-a-row games
action games
board games
bubble games
card games
hidden object games
management games
puzzle games

Subscriptions

Zylom offers two paid subscription models called FunPass and FunTicket.

FunPass is a paid subscription which allows players to download and play all Deluxe games with no restrictions. In principle, it works like a library card; players can "borrow" as many games as they would like during their paid subscription period, but do not purchase any individual games.

At the end of 2013 Zylom introduced a new paid subscription type: FunTicket. This paid subscription allows players to own for free one full game each month that (in contrary to FunPass) they can keep it forever, and a 30% discount on any other game purchase.

Both paid subscriptions use an automatic renewal at the end of the subscription period. That means that the player has to manually cancel the paid subscription right before its end, otherwise they will be charged an additional subscription period which will be automatically applied afterwards. Although the site typically informs the user for this subscription behaviour, it can be very easy for him/her to not notice it and be charged additionally without his/her will.

History

Zylom was founded in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, in 2001. Due to the success of the company it expanded fast and just a couple of years later in 2006, it was acquired by the American RealNetworks Inc.. In 2011, RealNetworks came up with one name for all their game websites, GameHouse. Zylom became part of GameHouse too, but because of the popular and well-known name of the company, it stayed Zylom for their consumers. In 2012 Zylom’s in-house game studio was closed, but Zylom still continues to develop their own game titles like the Delicious series.

Delicious is a series of time management casual games that is developed by Zylom Studios and later on by Gamehouse Studios. From the 7th game onwards, the games are developed by Gamehouse Studios and Blue Giraffe.

The nine founders of Zylom had a hard time making the website profitable in the first years. Releasing Deluxe games, advertisements, and a change of target audience was the answer. In the beginning, Zylom mainly focused on online games for young men, until extensive research revealed their games were mostly played by women. The company decided to change their target audience and focused more and more on download games that were suitable for female players. Nowadays Zylom is strongly related to www.gamehouse.com, www.realnetworks.com, and www.atrativa.com.br

2001 – Zylom is founded in Eindhoven, the Netherlands.
2004 – Zylom expands to Europe.
2006 – Zylom is acquired by RealNetworks Inc..
2011 - Zylom becomes GameHouse, but still operates under the name Zylom for consumers.

Awards

2004 – Received the Rising Star Award.
2005 – Website of the Year in Germany and the United Kingdom (Games & Entertainment category).
2006 - Website of the Year in Germany, United Kingdom, Spain, France, Italy and the Netherlands (Games & Entertainment category). According to Deloitte Technology Fast 500 ranking, Zylom is the fastest growing media/entertainment company in 2006.^[1]
2007 - Website of the Year in Germany, United Kingdom, Spain, France, Italy and the Netherlands (Games & Entertainment category).
2008 - Website of the Year in the United States, Germany, United Kingdom, Spain, France, Italy and the Netherlands (Games & Entertainment category).
2009 - Website of the Year in the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Germany and the Netherlands (Games & Entertainment category).
2010 - Website of the Year in the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands (Games & Entertainment category).
2011 - Overall Website of the Year in the United Kingdom and Spain. Website of the Year in the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, and Brazil (Games & Entertainment category).
2012 - Overall Website of the Year in the United Kingdom, Brazil, France and Spain. Website of the Year in the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, and Brazil (Games & Entertainment category).
2013 - Overall Website of the Year in the United Kingdom and Brazil. Best and most popular Website of the Year in the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, and Brazil (Games & Entertainment category).^[2]

External links

Website of Zylom

Related Research Articles

Reflexive Entertainment was a video game developer based in Lake Forest, California. The company was cofounded by Lars Brubaker, Ernie Ramirez, James Smith and Ion Hardie in 1997. They developed nineteen games independently, published two games, started distribution of downloadable casual games on their online Arcade, created a division of their Arcade entirely devoted to Mac games for Mac users and started hosting ad supported free online web browser games. In 2005, Reflexive's Wik and the Fable of Souls won three awards at the 2005 Independent Games Festival which included Innovation in Visual Art, Innovation in Game Design and the Seumas McNally Award For Independent Game Of The Year. In October 2008, Reflexive Entertainment was acquired by Amazon.com. On February 3, 2009, Amazon.com began hosting casual game content for internet download.

Shot Online is a massive multiplayer online golf video game which also features character development and MMORPG elements. It is developed by the Seoul-based game developer WebzenOnNet Co. Ltd., and published by Webzen under their game portal website, GamesCampus. Although there is no subscription fee or cost to download and play the game, the game offers upgraded "Gold" membership plans for a monthly fee, and additional items may be purchased using real currency through the game's website.

bwin former Austrian based online betting company

bwin Interactive Entertainment AG, formerly betandwin, is an online betting brand owned by GVC Holdings. The group operated under international and regional licences in countries like Gibraltar, the Amerindian reserve of Kahnawake (Canada), and Belize; and Germany, Italy, Mexico, Croatia, Austria, France, and the United Kingdom in Europe. The Group offered sports betting, poker, casino games, soft and skill games with most revenue coming from poker and sports betting. Bwin had over 20 million registered customers in more than 25 core markets. Competence centres were located in Vienna, Stockholm, and Gibraltar.

GigaMedia Limited is a major provider of online entertainment software and services. GigaMedia develops software for online entertainment services, including the global online gaming market. GigaMedia’s FunTown game portal is a leading Asian casual games portal and the world’s largest online MahJong game site in terms of revenue. GigaMedia operates the EverestPoker.com poker site.

Station.com is Daybreak Game Company's portal that is the home to its many PC, Console, Casual and Mobile games. It is the home to many MMORPG's including EverQuest, EverQuest II, The Matrix Online, PlanetSide, and Star Wars Galaxies, which have gained hundreds of thousands of paid subscribers.

Gamezebo is a website that focuses on editorial coverage of the mobile gaming industry, offering interviews, reviews, previews, strategy guides, and news. It had been centered on casual games, but after a redesign in 2014, the site changed direction to primarily highlight mobile games.

FunOrb was a casual gaming site created by Jagex. Launched on 27 February 2008, and closed on August 7th 2018, it was the company's first major release after their successful MMORPG, RuneScape. All of the games were programmed in Java.

HipSoft is a Redmond, Washington-based developer of casual video games founded in 2002 by three of the original founders of Monolith Productions: Brian Goble, Garrett Price, and Bryan Bouwman. HipSoft has made over a dozen games, many of which have become popular in the casual gaming industry. Its games have been translated into many different languages and are distributed and sold worldwide through websites and retail outlets. All of the games are available for Windows and most for Mac OS X, and are being developed by partner companies for the Nintendo DS, mobile phones and other platforms.

Viacom International Media Networks international division of Viacom Media Networks

Viacom International Media Networks (VIMN) is the international division of Viacom. The company oversees the production, broadcasting and promotion of key Viacom brands outside of the United States. These brands include MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, BET, VIVA, Colors and Game One.

Metaboli is a French online video game service. Users may buy unitary games to own through Gamesplanet and GameTap, or pay a monthly fee so that they can access the company's library of games on Metaboli's site. Depending on their subscription, subscribers can access from over 150 to over 600 games. It is present in numerous countries including France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, and the United States and Canada. Metaboli has since been the leading platform for digital game sales and rental in Europe. Some major publishers have large catalogs available on Metaboli's database such as Activision, Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Rockstar Games, Square Enix, THQ, Sega, and Bethesda Softworks.

Intenium GmbH is a European publisher and distributor of casual games designed for females. The company focuses on social and casual multiplayer online gaming, including Bonga Online, Alamandi and an unannounced product that was first unveiled in closed beta at the very end of 2012. Intenium started with downloadable games and now operates an online distribution network in Western Europe and has access to European retail chains. After years of work in game business the following consumer brands were established: «DEUTSCHLAND SPIELT!», «SCREENSEVEN», «INSIDER TALES», «ALAMANDI».

Nevosoft is a casual game developer, publisher, distributor, and portal headquartered in St. Petersburg, Russia. Nevosoft was founded in 2002. The company has four development studios situated in St. Petersburg and Moscow, which together deliver downloadable and online entertainment software for various platforms Nevosoft makes its games available in Russian and English via its official websites. Besides Nevosoft's titles are translated into more than 10 languages and are distributed worldwide through both online and offline channels.

Qobuz is a French commercial music streaming and downloading service. It was founded in 2007 by Yves Riesel and has expanded to a limited range of overseas markets, including the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy and Spain. It is presently on trial in the USA and due to launch in May 2019. It offers a tiered subscription service but, unlike its competitor Spotify, does not provide free-of-charge streaming other than for a trial period.

PlayStation Now is a cloud gaming subscription service developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment. The platform allows users to access a selection of PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 games, which can then be streamed to their PlayStation 4 and PC, with PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 4 titles optionally available to download on PlayStation 4.

Google Play Newsstand is a discontinued news aggregator and digital newsstand service by Google. On May 8, 2018, Google announced at Google I/O that Google Play Newsstand was being amalgamated with Google News. Launched in November 2013 through the merger of Google Play Magazines and Google Currents, the service lets users subscribe to magazines and topical news feeds, receiving new issues and updates automatically. Content can be read on a dedicated Newsstand section of the Google Play website or through the mobile apps for Android and iOS. Offline download and reading is supported on the mobile apps.

Xbox Game Pass is a subscription service from Microsoft for use with its Xbox One games console. Described as "Netflix for video games", the Xbox Game Pass grants users access to a catalog of games from a range of publishers for a single monthly subscription price. The service was launched on June 1, 2017 while Xbox Live Gold subscribers received priority access on May 24.

References

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[Deloitte_Technology_Fast_500-1] "Deloitte Technology Fast 500".

[Website_of_the_Year-2] "Website of the Year".