Facebook Says Paying Gamers Surge By 24%

When it comes social networking on the Internet, Facebook is the site most people go to. Facebook has been trying all sorts of ways to generate more revenue from the approximately 1,000,000,000 members it has all around the world. One of the ways that Facebook is trying to squeeze money out of these members is with video games that users can pay to play.

A lot of the pay to play video games on Facebook come in the form of games that are actually free to play, but players spend money on virtual goods to make the game more enjoyable and move along more quickly. Facebook has made an interesting announcement that the number of people who are paying to play games via the social network has increased significantly.

Facebook says that the number of paying gamers using its service has increased by 24% compared to a year ago. The social network says that desktop-game players via the social network increased to more than 250 million from 235 million in October. Facebook also notes that it has paid a total of $2 billion to developers during 2012.

Facebook makes money on games by taking a percentage of the fee gamers pay. Facebook has also stated that over 100 developers generated more than $1 million each in revenue from Facebook during 2012. While Facebook is making more money off gamers, the company isn't holding back on its other revenue-generating plans. Facebook recently announced an expansion to its Facebook Exchange service allowing advertisers to target users based on web browsing history.

[via Bloomberg]