Viacom sells Xfire game service to Titan Gaming

From CNET News.com: Viacom-owned game chat and discovery service service Xfire has been sold to Titan Gaming.

News of the sale broke late Monday, Xfire General Manager Chris Kirmse left a cryptic note on the front page of the site titled "team leaving" saying that "most of the team that has brought you Xfire for the last six years is leaving, including me." Kirmse did not go into any additional detail on who the buyers were, nor had there been an official announcement made on the company's blog or about page.

Xfire and former parent company Viacom did not immediately respond to a request for more information. But Titan issued a statement late Monday indicating it had purchased Xfire and saying it intends to "utilize the Xfire platform to help gaming companies better engage their users."

Titan Gaming specializes in monetization, particularly in-game currency, video advertising, and in-game betting.

Xfire was originally sold to Viacom back in 2006 for $102 million. The site has since gone on to register more than 16.7 million users and put out 127 software releases. In early 2005, it was sued for patent infringement by Yahoo over the company's use of instant messaging technology. The dispute was settled a year later.

Xfire co-founders Dennis Fong and Mike Cassidy parted ways with the company shortly after its acquisition. Fong went on to found Raptr--a similarly featured social games network, and Cassidy went on to work for Benchmark Capital and, ultimately Ruba, which was sold to Google earlier this year.

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