Facebook Instant Games Celebrates Second Anniversary

By Brittany Vincent

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Facebook Instant Games is celebrating its second anniversary, having served up over 20 billion game sessions since its launch in 2016.

Instant Games launched in 2016 on Facebook and Messenger with 20 games available in 30 markets. The platform has since grown considerably to encompass over 6,000 games globally. After opening up to all developers in March, over 20 billion game sessions have been recorded across all platforms that support Instant Games. The service initially began as a test for Facebook, which hid simple basketball and soccer games behind emojis, and it’s only expanded at an exponential rate from there.

Facebook is currently working to bring Instant Games to additional platforms, including Facebook Groups and Facebook Lite, as announced in October, as well as the mobile version of fb.gg, where the giant corrals all its gaming-related content.

Recently, games like “Trivia Crack,” “Car Match,” and “DragonZ Rising” hit Facebook, and new updates rolled out to “8 Ball Pool,” “Ludo Club,” and “Everwing.” Additionally, as Director of Product Management Vivek Sharma notes, gameplay sessions for titles like these has grown over the last 90 days to over 6.3 billion, which is nearly three times the amount of sessions for 2017. The amount of daily and monthly active players continues to grow as well, also jumping up over three times the amount since 2018 began.

Facebook is looking to implement even more features for players in the future, such as better personalization, Instant Games on additional platforms, and more new games for players of all stripes.