GREE Shutting Down OpenFeint, Gives Developers One Month’s Notice

The social platform, OpenFeint, will be shut down in a month by Japanese parent company, GREE. What will this mean for iOS gamers and developers?

OpenFeint, the much-maligned social gaming platform that offers players, "awesome features", has a month left before being shut down by its parent company, GREE. The Japanese media company has given developers who use the service until December 14 to migrate all of their data to other services, like Game Center. This deadline is sure to exacerbate things for developers who are already under tight time restraints to push out content before Apple freezes the App Store from December 21-28.

Some games that utilize the OpenFeint service are Fruit Ninja, Jetpack Joyride, Tiny Wings, Robot Unicorn Attack, and Fieldrunners. These are popular titles and players that use OpenFeint to connect with each other, whether its through leaderboards or multiplayer, will have to see if developers can find a solution within the next month. Launching a game that uses OpenFeint after the shutdown might result in crashes if developers can't find a different service. GREE has offered to migrate the games to their own social platform, though the one month ultimatum might have soured the company in many developers' eyes.

What do you think about this news? Will it affect you as a gamer or were you never a fan of OpenFeint's "awesome features" in the first place? Let us know in the comments below!