Kongregate CEO Emily Greer Joins PlayFab Board of Directors

SEATTLE, June 30, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- PlayFab, the industry's most complete backend service to build, launch and grow live games, today announced that Emily Greer, co-founder and CEO of Kongregate, has joined its Board of Directors. PlayFab also appointed co-founder and lead developer, Matt Augustine, as Chief Technology Officer (CTO), and is rounding out its leadership team with the addition of four key game and technology industry veterans.

Greer's experience building Kongregate, a subsidiary of GameStop, into a leading free-to-play game portal and mobile game publisher will be invaluable to PlayFab as it focuses on providing the best game-as-a-service technology to help developers of all sizes build, launch, and grow great live games. Pulling from her expertise in mobile and online games, Greer will advise PlayFab on the evolving needs of game developers as the company continues to expand its backend game operations platform.

"Ongoing live operations are crucial to success in free-to-play games," said Greer. "Small and mid-sized developers have been at a huge disadvantage because of the cost and complexity of building and running a backend. PlayFab's backend-as-a-service can help them compete in the tough mobile market."

Greer joins an already distinguished PlayFab Board of Directors, which includes Mitch Lasky, general partner at Benchmark, Bob Berry, CEO of Envelop VR, and Timothy Dick, managing director at Startup Capital Ventures.

"Kongregate is on of the biggest publishers of indie games out there today, and Emily's keen understanding of what developers need to become more successful will be a great addition to our board," said James Gwertzman, co-founder and CEO of PlayFab. "Combined with our recent senior leadership hires, we're uniquely positioning PlayFab to help developers and grow the live games space in the months and years to come."

In addition to building out its board of directors, PlayFab also appointed co-founder Matt Augustine as CTO. As lead architect of PlayFab's backend platform, Augustine is focused on continuing to build out tools and technologies that empower game developers to boost player acquisition, retention, and monetization.

PlayFab has also recently added four key hires to its leadership team to head up business development, marketing, product, and game operations success. They include:  

• Nick Beckley, director of business development – Beckley joins PlayFab from RAD Game Tools where he led sales for the popular games middleware provider. To his role at PlayFab, Beckley brings experience working with developers of all sizes, from small indies to large AAA studios.
• Liz Hunt, director of product – Hunt is a user experience expert who previously led the mobile team at Starbucks and technology team at frog design inc., a global product strategy and design firm.
• Thom Robbins, director of marketing – Robbins brings to PlayFab deep marketing experience from his years at Microsoft, Kentico Software, and Socrata, where he evangelized platform technologies to developers.
• Scott Willoughby, director of game operations success – Willoughby joins PlayFab from Wizards of the Coast, where he led digital strategy and operations for Magic: The Gathering. He also previously led game operations at PopCap. At PlayFab, he will lead efforts to help game developers craft and execute effective game operations strategies.

PlayFab is rapidly growing and currently hiring experienced software developers and engineers to work out of its Seattle office. For more information on current availabilities and how to apply, please visit: https://playfab.com/jobs

About PlayFab, Inc.
Based in Seattle, WA, PlayFab offers the most complete set of backend services to build, launch, and grow live games, including player accounts, virtual goods, analytics, leaderboards, multiplayer, in-game messaging, content management and more. PlayFab's tools are cross-platform and designed to be used by mobile, PC and console developers. For more information, visit playfab.com. 

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SOURCE PlayFab

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