Airtel adds mobile games to carrier agnostic Wynk portfolio

Continuing with its aggressive content push, telecom service provider Bharti Airtel has launched the beta version of Wynk Games, a carrier agnostic mobile app based gaming destination.

The telecom company already has music streaming app Wynk Music and movie streaming app Wynk Movies, both of which are carrier agnostic.

Wynk Games, hosts over 2,000 local and global games across genres such as cricket, sports, racing, adventure, cards, kids and puzzles, the company said in a statement.

The platform will host games from about 150 developers including popular game houses such as Square Enix, Zeptolab, Thumbstar, Tresensa, Bulkypix and more.

"By subscribing to Wynk Games, customers can enjoy a host of games at no additional cost – this includes many games that are typically found as 'paid' elsewhere. Also, though customers download various games for free, they often can only play a few levels of the game before hitting locked levels and getting prompted to make coin purchases to continue," said Kartik Sheth, CEO of Wynk, Bharti Airtel.

Wynk Games is currently available for free to Airtel users and is offered at Rs 29 to other customers. Akin to Wynk Music and Wynk Movies, users can download games and play offline ad-free.

Airtel has tied with mobile gaming technology firm Playphone, a GungHo Subsidiaria and Softbank group company based in San Mateo, California, to offer Indian game developers a platform to expand their reach.

"With our partnership, Indian developers on 'Wynk Games' will also automatically get published in countries where Playphone is present – thus giving them opportunities to expand their reach across other global as well as emerging markets. Developers require only about 10 lines of code to adapt their app to the subscription platform for Wynk Games," Sheth said.

Launched in September 2014, Wynk Music claims to have crossed 15 million downloads with over 8 million songs played each day. Two-thirds of downloads were made by users who do not subscribe to Bharti Airtel's mobile telephony services.