RIM has acquired mobile gaming firm Scoreloop in a bid to stimulate development of social networking apps on its BlackBerry platform. RIM described Scoreloop as “a pioneer in mobile social gaming,” which offers a customisable and cross-platform social mobile gaming developer tool kit. The firm plans to integrate Scoreloop’s tools with its recently-announced BBM (BlackBerry Messenger) Social Platform, due to launch in the third quarter. Announced last month at BlackBerry World 2011, RIM has opened up the platform to “enable our developers to create social app experiences.” It is designed to integrate RIM’s popular BBM service with social networks such as Foursquare.

“We’re excited that the Scoreloop team is joining the BlackBerry Developer team and bringing their expertise in creating social and collaborative gaming toolkits for mobile developers to the BlackBerry platform,” said Tyler Lessard, VP of Global Alliances & Developer Relations at RIM. “We look forward to working with the team at Scoreloop to provide tools that will further enable our developer community to take gaming to a new level of social integration on the BlackBerry platform.”

In a separate statement, Scoreloop CEO Dr. Mark Gumpinger said the firm would continue its cross-platform approach – it also works on the iOS and Android platforms among others – but claimed its new BlackBerry solution would be “unparalleled.”

Scoreloop was founded in 2008 and is headquartered in Munich, Germany with offices in the US and Asia. The company is funded by the premier European VCs Target Partners and Earlybird. Financial terms of the RIM deal were not disclosed.