Mobile social gaming company PapayaMobile said that it has launched “the last game to be developed and published internally by PapayaMobile.” It said that it now plans “to entirely focus on providing developers with the tools and services to more effectively drive user engagement, distribution and monetisation of games.” It also said that it will make it easier for developers to create games by open-sourcing Papaya Game Engine code from its back-catalogue of titles. The company describes itself as “the leading games social networking service on Android, with over 15 million unique active users.”

The company is making its Game Engine code available through its Collective-Social initiative. With access to this code, alongside its SDKs, developers have “the tools they need to build high-quality mobile social gaming experiences from the ground up.” As further updates are released for its products, PapayaMobile “may also create sample apps that showcase new features and immediately open-source them in order to educate the developer community on these tools.

Earlier this year, PapayaMobile secured US$18 million in additional funding, which at the time it said would “help expand the growing PapayaMobile developer ecosystem in both the U.S. and Europe, while strengthening the portfolio of PapayaMobile products.” The company has had more than 350 apps integrated into its network.

Paul Chen, head of business development for the company, said: “As soon as a social network begins publishing its own games, there will inevitably be conflicts of interest on activities like driving traffic and network promotions. We do not want to place our developers in a position in which traffic from their games are being forcefully redirected to games we publish ourselves. That does not place our developer’s best interest at heart.”

The company’s final game, Pet Paradise (pictured), is available from Android Market as a free download.