Diwip, a game development company specializing in social gaming, online games, and casino-style games, was founded in April 2010 by Yaniv Gamzo and Udi Kantzuker. diwip's first main product, Best Casino, is on of the top grossing applications on Facebook. It's mobile sister product, Best Casino Slots for Android is ranked in the Top 4o grossing apps[1].
The company, based in Tel Aviv, offers games that users play on their site, diwip.com, on social networking platforms like Facebook and Vkontakte, and on stand-alone mobile platforms including Apple iOS, Android, and Windows 8.
Diwip's mission is to create high-quality games featuring high-end graphics, music, and sound effects in an exciting, fun online environment where players around the world can connect and engage with each other.
At the eGaming Review's Operators Awards in November 2012, diwip won the Social Operator of the Year award[2].
diwip started in 2010 with the development of a poker game. Gamzo and Kantzuker started the company together working on the back-end code development. They hired a designer from Jerusalem to create the simple front-end graphics and launched the game shortly after.
The poker game gradually developed to offer more than just poker and became a full casino-style application offering slots, roulette, Bingo, Texas Holdem, Blackjack, and later, video poker[3].
The full casino game, called Best Casino, launched in September 2010. In May 2011, the game hosted 300,000 monthly active users (MAU), and by May 2011 the number of MAU rose to 2 million. As of June 2013, Best Casino hosts 313,000 daily active users (DAU) and 1.6 million MAU. The application is considered one of the highest grossing apps on Facebook[4].
Right as the social gaming and casino gaming sectors started to plateau for Facebook developers like diwip, the company launched a mobile application for Android operating platforms, called Best Casino Slots, in April 2012. The company chose to release this exclusively slots application on the Android platform first because they felt it was less crowded in terms of applications and developers[5]. As of April 2013, the app is number 30 of the top gross apps on the Google Play store[6].
Later in 2012, the company released an iOS version of Best Casino slots. This application offers also only slots and opened the company up to further growth outside of its original Facebook platform.
Starting in November 2013, the company invested $2 million (USD) into the research and development of a new slot machine game. The company targeted slots players and starting working to develop a new slot experience that catered directly to the needs of the slots players[7].
Diwip conducted extensive research into the psychology of slot machine players to understand their playing habits, preferences, needs, and wants. From there, the development team created diwip's third game, Slots Club. Slots Club, in a beta form, went live on Facebook in April 2013[8].
In order to create a mobile version of Slots Club, diwip created a new development team working with the game engine, Unity. Using the cross-platform engine, Unity team members create a richer slot machine experience for the player on mobile operating systems (iOS, Android, and Windows 8). Currently, the diwip Unity team works exclusively for the development of a mobile version of Slots Club[9].
| Release Date | Product | Platform |
|---|---|---|
| September 2010 | Best Casino | |
| April 2012 | Best Casino Slots | Android |
| May 2012 | Bubble World | |
| October 2012 | Best Casino Slots | iOS |
| April 2013 | Slots Club (beta) |
