Facebook launched its Instant Games platform last November in 30 countries around the globe. An addition to Messenger, the HTML5 gaming platform allows friends and family members to battle it out across a variety of classic video games including Galaga, Pac-Man and Space Invaders, among others.
On Tuesday, Facebook said it has started the global rollout of Instant Games on Messenger complete with the new features it teased at its annual F8 conference a few weeks back such as turn-based gameplay and game bots to help re-engage players and encourage competition.
Speaking of, one of the first games to take advantage of turn-based gameplay will be Words with Friends: Frenzy from Zynga. Blackstorm's EverWing, meanwhile, is slated to be among the first to use game bots.
Messenger Product Manager Andrea Vaccari notes that there are currently more than 50 titles to play on the app (give or take a few depending on where you are located) with more being introduced on a near-weekly basis. For example, the world's top pool game, 8 Ball Pool from Miniclip, is coming to the platform very soon.
Games are free to play and there are currently no in-app purchases. Whether or not Facebook will maintain this model, however, remains to be seen.
Instant Games on Messenger will roll out worldwide over the next few weeks across both Android and iOS, we're told.