RockYou was a company that developed widgets for MySpace and implemented applications for various social networks and Facebook. Since 2014, it has engaged primarily in the purchases of rights to classic video games; it incorporates in-game ads and re-distributes the games.

History

Based in San Francisco, California, RockYou was founded in 2005 by Lance Tokuda and

Jia Shen Jia Shen is an American technology entrepreneur best known as the co-founder of RockYou, a company that developed games and widgets for social networks, such as Myspace and Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social network ...

. The company's first product, a slideshow service, was designed to work as an application widget. Later applications included various forms of voice mail, text and photo stylization, and games. As of December 2007, it was the most successful widget maker for the

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...

platform in terms of total installations. In May 2007, RockYou was one of the companies invited to participate in F8, the event at which Facebook announced an open

platform Platform may refer to: Technology * Computing platform, a framework on which applications may be run * Platform game, a genre of video games * Car platform, a set of components shared by several vehicle models * Weapons platform, a system or ...

allowing third parties to develop and operate their own

software application Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...

s on the Facebook website. Applications made for Facebook include Super Wall, "Hug Me", Likeness, Vampires, Slideshows, Birthdays, MyGifts, and Emote, among others. In December 2009, RockYou experienced a data breach resulting in the exposure of over 32 million user accounts. This resulted from storing user data in an unencrypted database (including user passwords in plain text instead of using a

cryptographic hash A cryptographic hash function (CHF) is a hash algorithm (a map of an arbitrary binary string to a binary string with fixed size of n bits) that has special properties desirable for cryptography: * the probability of a particular n-bit output ...

) and not patching a ten-year-old SQL vulnerability. RockYou failed to provide a notification of the breach to users and miscommunicated the extent of the breach. In October 2010, the company completed major layoffs. In November 2010, the company's founder and

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

, Lance Tokuda, stepped down from his position as CEO and was later replaced by Lisa Marino in April 2011. In 2010, RockYou announced the acquisitions of two game development studios, TirNua and Playdemic, as well as development agreements for two new games from

John Romero John is a common English name and surname: * John (given name) * John (surname) John may also refer to: New Testament Works * Gospel of John, a title often shortened to John * First Epistle of John, often shortened to 1 John * Second ...

's social game studio

Loot Drop ''Loot Drop'' was a social video game studio that was started in San Mateo, California. It was created by John Romero and Brenda Romero with veteran game designer Tom Hall heading up his own game. Its tagline was "Believe in fun". Formation ...

. Playdemic's first game, ''Gourmet Ranch'', was nominated in February 2011 for a Mochi Award for Best Social Game. RockYou's investors include

SoftBank is a Japanese multinational conglomerate holding company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo which focuses on investment management. The Group primarily invests in companies operating in technology, energy, and financial sectors. It also runs the ...

Sequoia Capital Sequoia Capital is an American venture capital firm. The firm is headquartered in Menlo Park, California, and specializes in seed stage, early stage, and growth stage investments in private companies across technology sectors. , Sequoia's total a ...

, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Partech International, and DCM. In 2011, the company agreed to undergo two independent security audits to settle a proposed class action in California over a 2009 data breach that exposed millions of passwords and email addresses. In 2012, the company settled

Federal Trade Commission The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is an independent agency of the United States government whose principal mission is the enforcement of civil (non-criminal) antitrust law and the promotion of consumer protection. The FTC shares jurisdiction ov ...

charges. The settlement barred future deceptive claims by the company regarding privacy and data security, required it to implement and maintain a data security program, barred future violations of the

Children's Online Privacy Protection Act The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA) is a United States federal law, located at (). The act, effective April 21, 2000, applies to the online collection of personal information by persons or entities under U.S. juri ...

(COPPA) Rule, and required it to pay a $250,000 civil penalty to settle the COPPA charges. On June 13, 2012, RockYou acquired Bingo developer Ryzing and relocated its headquarters to San Francisco, California. In August 2012, RockYou launched ''The Walking Dead Social Game'' based on

AMC AMC may refer to: Film and television * AMC Theatres, an American movie theater chain * AMC Networks, an American entertainment company ** AMC (TV channel) ** AMC+, streaming service ** AMC Networks International, an entertainment company *** ...

's hit series of the same name. In April 2014, RockYou purchased three Playdom social games from

Disney The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was originally founded on October ...

: ''Gardens of Time'', ''Words of Wonder'', and ''City Girl'', and announced it is licensing ''

Army Attack ''Army Attack'' was a social networking strategy video game developed by Digital Chocolate's Helsinki Helsinki ( or ; ; sv, Helsingfors, ) is the Capital city, capital, primate city, primate, and List of cities and towns in Finland, mos ...

'', ''Crazy Penguin Wars'', ''Millionaire City'', and ''Zombie Lane'' from

Digital Chocolate Digital Chocolate, Inc. was a video game developer and publisher headquartered in San Mateo, California. It was founded in 2003 by Trip Hawkins, the founder of video game companies Electronic Arts and The 3DO Company. The company focused on deve ...

. In 2015, RockYou purchased ''The Godfather: Five Families'', ''Kingdoms of Camelot'', ''Edgeworld'', ''Glory of Rome'', and ''Dragons of Atlantis'' from

Kabam Kabam (formerly Watercooler, Inc.) is an interactive entertainment company founded in 2006 and headquartered in Vancouver, BC. with offices in Montréal, QC, San Francisco, CA and Austin, Texas. The company creates, develops and publishes massive ...

. In 2016, RockYou acquired ''War of Nations'' from

GREE GREE (derived from an abbreviation of the " Six degrees of separation" concept) is a Japanese social networking service founded by Yoshikazu Tanaka and operated by GREE, Inc. GREE focuses primarily on mobile games and over ninety percent of it ...

. In 2019, RockYou closed down its popular but money-losing PurePlay Poker Game without notice. Shortly after, the RockYou corporate website went dark. In February 2019, after several Facebook posts promoting "exciting news" and a plan to upgrade servers, RockYou announced the closure of ''The Godfather: Five Families.'' Players were given 5 days' notice.

On February 13, 2019, RockYou filed for

Chapter 7 bankruptcy Chapter 7 of Title 11 of the United States Code (Bankruptcy Code) governs the process of liquidation under the bankruptcy laws of the United States, in contrast to Chapters 11 and 13, which govern the process of ''reorganization'' of a debto ...

in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.

Data breach

In December 2009, the company experienced a data breach resulting in the exposure of over 32 million user accounts. The company used an unencrypted database to store user account data, including

plaintext In cryptography, plaintext usually means unencrypted information pending input into cryptographic algorithms, usually encryption algorithms. This usually refers to data that is transmitted or stored unencrypted. Overview With the advent of comp ...

passwords (as opposed to password hashes) for its service, as well as passwords to connected accounts at partner sites (including Facebook, Myspace, and webmail services). RockYou would also e-mail the password unencrypted to the user during account recovery. They also did not allow using special characters in the passwords. The hacker used a 10-year-old SQL vulnerability to gain access to the database. The company took days to notify users after the incident, and initially incorrectly reported that the breach only affected older applications when it actually affected all RockYou users. The full list of passwords exposed as a result of the breach is available in

Kali Linux Kali Linux is a Debian-derived Linux distribution designed for digital forensics and penetration testing. It is maintained and funded by Offensive Security. Kali Linux has around 600 penetration-testing programs (tools), including Armitage (a ...

, and has been since its launch in 2013. Due to its easy attainability and comprehensive length, it is commonly used in

dictionary attacks In cryptanalysis and computer security, a dictionary attack is an attack using a restricted subset of a keyspace to defeat a cipher or authentication mechanism by trying to determine its decryption key or passphrase, sometimes trying thousands o ...

Social applications and games

*Bingo Blingo *RockYou Poker *Zoo World Classic *City Girl Life *Words of Wonder *Gardens of Time *Kitchen Scramble *Bakery Blitz *Glory of Rome *Kingdoms of Camelot *Dragons of Atlantis *Brightwood Adventures *Pieces of Flair *Pioneer Adventures *Gold Rush *Lost Island *Volcano Island *New World *Skull Island *Rapid Poker *Kahzuu Slots *Solitare Arena *Solitare 3 Arena *Lucky Slots *War of Nations *Crazy Penguin Wars *Horoscopes *RockYou Live *Speed Racing *Zoo World *Zoo World 2 *Birthday Cards *Hug Me *Edgeworld *Hero World *My Casino *Toy Land *Super Pets *Movie Blitz *The Godfather: Five Families *The Walking Dead Social Game *Jackpot Bingo *Mall World *Fashion Designer *Zombie Lane *Millionaire City *PurePlay Poker *

Gamasutra, Christian Nutt 4/18/14, RockYou's New Strategy: Rescue Games That Other Publishers Don't Want http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/215827/RockYous_new_strategy_Rescue_games_that_other_publishers_dont_want.php

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rockyou! Companies established in 2005 2005 establishments in California Privately held companies based in California Cyberattacks