PlayMob: how a London startup tied charity giving to virtual goods

PlayMob was founded in London in 2007 as a game development studio, with Jude Ower as founder and chief executive. The company built a platform that lets charities connect with objects and characters inside games. The point is to make giving frequent and small, a daily act that fits into play and reaches people who would not normally donate.

The mechanism was simple. A game developer chooses a virtual good in the game and promises a share of its sales, at least 50 percent, to a charity of the developer's choice. The charity states which types of games and objects it wants to be matched with. Brands could also buy a sponsor package to support a charity. The model gives charities lower fundraising costs and bigger audiences, and it lets developers get players used to paying for virtual goods by attaching a good cause. Coverage by TechCrunch argued that spikes in charitable giving are not sustainable and that little and often suits the purchase of virtual goods. It also noted that when Zynga sold Sweet Seeds for Haiti relief, 80 percent of the givers were players who had not paid before, which showed how a charity item can turn non-paying players into paying ones.

In January 2013 PlayMob was nominated for The Europas People's Choice Award. The Europas Tech Startup Awards were held in Berlin on Tuesday, January 22, 2013, at the Postbahnhof, with the event starting at 6 pm. The awards cover early, mid and late stage technology startups as well as investors and media in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, across more than 20 categories. A panel of judges picks winners, and some awards also use public and peer voting.

The nomination is the only part of the 2013 awards on record here, so no result is stated.

The playmob.com address no longer loads in November 2026. The version with the www prefix shows an empty not-found message with no company content. No page from PlayMob or Jude Ower announcing a closure or a move was found, so the platform's status is unconfirmed.

Because PlayMob was a platform and not a single title, the directory lists no playable game for it.