German networking provider Exit Games has signed a distribution deal with Chinese online operator The9 to bring its Photon tech to China.

Designed to enable real-time interaction for games including first-person shooters and massively multiplayer online games, Photon's socket-server is built on native C/C++ and utilises the UDP protocol, while custom server code is written in .NET/C#.

SDK support includes Unity, iOS, Android, Flash and HTML5.

Build and scale

"Developing and operating successful online games in China is a huge technical challenge as they must scale for an enormous amount of concurrent users. That is why we are happy to distribute Exit Games Photon, allowing game developers to build robust and scalable online games on multiple platforms, and to operate them on a minimum amount of servers," said Chris Shen, The9's vice president.

"We are absolutely thrilled to partner with an online games powerhouse like The9. China is a fantastic opportunity for us, with many highly skilled online game developers, and the partnership with The9 opens up this market for us," added Christof Wegmann, CTO and founder of Exit Games.

The9 already has strong experience working with western companies as it operates its own version of the OpenFeint social mobile platform in China.

You can find out more about Photo via the Exit Games' website.