Facebook has launched a mobile publishing pilot to help small and medium-sized developers distribute their games around the world.

The Facebook Mobile Games Publishing programme will see the social network promote games in its own apps, exposing them to millions of Facebook mobile users. The company will also share analytics tools that it has used to grow games on the platform, with developers.

The company will take a revenue share from developers that join the programme.

There are currently more than 800 million monthly users of Facebook’s mobile apps with more than 260 million playing games on the social network. Facebook’s reach and targeting campaigns will help games engage “a valuable audience of the right users”, the company said.

Ten developers from the US, Europe and Asia are already working with Facebook, including Gameloft, Gamevil and Dragonplay.

“As the mobile app ecosystem expands, breaking through and getting discovered in a crowded marketplace is the biggest challenge for mobile games,” said Facebook software engineer Victor Medeiros in a post on the company’s developer blog.

The news is likely to impact Zynga, which has been trying to succeed with mobile games after making its name with titles designed for the Facebook platform. The struggling company launched its own mobile developer partner programme in June 2012.

Since then Zynga reportedly cut 18 per cent of its workforce and closed the studio behind hit mobile game Draw Something, OMGPOP. Zynga bought OMGPOP for $180 million just over a year ago but wrote off $95 million of the investment in October 2012.

Zynga’s outlook for the second quarter of the year is a net loss of between $28.5 million and $39 million.

A number of mobile game publishers have launched publishing initiatives for third party developers, offering their expertise to make games successful in exchange for a share of revenues. Rovio, Kabam, Glu Mobile and Dragonplay have all launched publishing arms this year.