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There are a ton of (mostly) highly rated games in the Apple appstore under the company name 'Chillingo.ltd', but the games are so wildly different from one another, that I can't understand how they could develop the hundreds of them internally.

What's the deal with this? Is 'Chillingo' just a pseudonym for a group of developers?

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2 Answers

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It's a publishing company.

From their website:

Chillingo is a leading Independent Games Publisher and a division of Electronic Arts. The company publishes innovative games and software for various platforms.

They don't develop games. Developers come to them and make various arrangements for their games to be published/distributed. It works in a similar way to how games for PC and consoles are produced: for example, Deus Ex: Human Revolution is developed by Square Enix, but published by Eidos Interactive.

Game publishers perform a variety of functions. They are generally responsible for marketing and production costs which might include the development of the games they publish.

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Deus Ex is a poor example here. Eidos is in fact a subsidiary of Square Enix, so their publishing of Human Revolution has more to do with historic precedent and organizational structure than it does the role of a publisher vs. a developer. A better recent example might be any of the work of Obsidian Entertainment, who have had their recent titles published by a variety of companies, including Bethesda/Zenimax, Sega, and Square Enix. – LessPop_MoreFizz Aug 23 '11 at 6:14
@LessPop Fair enough. Thanks! I admit, I used the first game that popped into my head. Your examples are better. – Anna Lear♦ Aug 23 '11 at 13:22
"Deus Ex: Human Revolution is developed by Square Enix, but published by Eidos Interactive." If you're going to make this distinction, you got it backwards. Eidos Montreal is the studio that developed the game. Eidos Interactive is the publisher. Square Enix is the owner of Eidos Interactive (and Eidos Montreal). – Joe Wreschnig Mar 23 '12 at 21:49
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Chillingo is simply a publisher for games on the App Store. Developers submit their apps to Chillingo so they can publish it instead of having to do it themselves. Chillingo handles the marketing and other things like that, so the developers don't need to worry about it. Also, Chillingo games are generally very popular, so a Chillingo published game will likely get a smaller development studio more sales and a much higher exposure level on the App Store than if they were to publish it themselves.

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Aha. You'd think the developer would be more prominently featured in the games than the publisher, but maybe I'm just not that familiar with the business side of game distribution. – GnomeSlice Aug 23 '11 at 5:36
Yeah, Chillingo games have a lot of Chillingo branding and not much mention of the developer, but I suppose that's the reason Chillingo brand is very well known. – Kevin Y Aug 23 '11 at 5:42

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