An executive from social gaming company GREE has apologised for the short notice given to developers regarding the closure of the OpenFeint social gaming platform.

Developers were only given until 14 December to remove their game data from OpenFeint or transfer it to Gree’s own platform. If developers take no action, their game data – such as achievement definitions, screenshots, game descriptions and leaderboards – will be lost.

In an interview with Pocket Gamer, GREE SVP of marketing and developer relations Eros Resmini personally apologised for the “tough situation” the company had put developers in.

He said GREE originally announced that it would shut down OpenFeint in the middle of the year and planned to give developers a year to move their data. Despite the announcement, many developers didn’t remove their data and OpenFeint actually gained users during the intervening period.

However, OpenFeint has been running on maintenance-only mode for some time, meaning its servers will struggle to provide sufficient performance as Christmas approaches, according Resmini.

The executive added that GREE will help developers as much as possible to deal with the short timeframe and that many developers have already moved their data to the GREE platform.

GREE acquired OpenFeint for US$104 million in April 2011.