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BBM, Blackberry's proprietary instant messenger now run by Indonesian Creative Media Works, has announced a partnership with SOFTGAMES, the world’s largest HTML5 games developer, to power BBM Games with a collection of over 400 competitive, casual, free-to-play HTML5 games.

According to Creative Media Works, about 20 games will initially be made available to users in 15 countries including Nigeria, South Africa, Canada, the United States, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Germany, India, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand.  

Gaming is the second most popular activity on mobile next to “messaging” in a lot of countries. Four out of five smartphone owners have played a game on their device and nearly half of the adults play games on a daily basis, according to Creative Media Works. Reports have shown that 90 percent of consumers' mobile time is spent in apps.

HTML5 games are cross-platform, which means they can be played on any device. A catalogue of HTML5 games can be accessed on BBM Games through BBM Discover with no requirement to download any app. The games are loaded on-demand, and users can share and update friends and family through direct messages in-game or via updates to the user’s BBM Feeds.

“Our vision is to help users instantly discover and engage with games they love,” said Alexander Krug, Founder/CEO of SOFTGAMES. “SOFTGAMES is thrilled to power the BBM Game Center with its stunning collection of HTML5 games. By providing the right tools and content, we are confident in fostering this business partnership, resulting in an even stronger foothold for both organizations in the industry.”  

BBM is one of the largest mobile messaging applications in the world and is available on over 100 million Blackberry, Android, iOS, and Windows phones. Created in August 2005, BBM has evolved from a pure messaging application for communication (text and video) to a social eco-system unifying chat, social, shopping, e-payments, top-up, news, travel and games.

“Users are always looking to do more on their messaging application as it is the app they use every day, multiple times a day. We continue to work with best in class partners to launch new services in order to meet the growing demands of our users across the world,” said Matthew Talbot, CEO of Creative Media Works, the company which operates and runs BBM globally. “As we continuously evolve our services, we have plans for BBM Games to include many new features and game types such as chat, co-operative, and even multi-player games. Multi-player games pair particularly well with BBM because they offer another fun way to keep in touch with friends and family.”