Agora.io Partners With Bunch To Bring Live Video Chat To Popular Mobile Games

SANTA CLARA, Calif., July 5, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Agora.io (www.agora.io), a global leader in real-time communication solutions, today announced its partnership with Bunch (www.bunch.live), a groundbreaking new app that lets users play their favorite mobile games with friends over video chat. Under the newly formalized deal, Agora will be the exclusive provider of real-time voice and video solutions used to power group video chat within the Bunch app and for games that offer direct support for the Bunch gaming platform.

Bunch offers an interactive mobile gaming platform built around its live video features. Drawing inspiration from "LAN parties" where multiple gamers gather to play together in the same place using a shared local area network (LAN) connection, Bunch recreates this collaborative experience by connecting mobile gamers through a native, extreme low latency group video conferencing features that supports up to six players simultaneously.

The underlying technology behind Bunch's innovative live video chat feature is Agora's AMG SDK, a voice and video solution for mobile game developers. The partnership allows Bunch to tap into Agora's global network of distributed data centers and proprietary virtual communications network to give users uninterrupted gameplay and high-definition live video no matter where they are in the world.  

"Bunch is hands down one of the most innovative use cases of live video that we've seen in a while. They've found a real need in the crowded gaming space and identified gamers' innate desire to have deeper interactions with one another," said Reggie Yativ, Chief Revenue & Operations Officer at Agora.io. "Bunch is answering the call for a new generation of gamers that wants to have meaningful interactions with the immediacy technology can provide, so we're excited to power a truly revolutionary concept that will surely transform the way gamers communicate and play, and more importantly, make it more fun."

While mobile live streaming has disrupted countless industries from social media and dating to customer service and retail, live video is still cutting edge and ramping up in mobile gaming because modern games are resource-intensive and utilize most of a mobile device's bandwidth. Adding multiple concurrent live video feeds on top of an already demanding application can be taxing for even the fastest mobile processors.

Bunch previously faced a host of CPU and RAM usage bottlenecks while trying to deploy live video chat. The company needed a truly mobile-first solution that requires less bandwidth, so Agora provided Bunch with a simple developer toolkit with a minimal device footprint without sacrificing video quality and reliability.

"In building Bunch, we wanted to give gamers that same feeling of comradery and rivalry that you get from playing with your friends in person. It's something my co-founders and I grew up with playing PC games like Starcraft and Counterstrike, and something we felt was inherently missing from the mobile gaming experience," said Selcuk Atli, co-founder and CEO of Bunch. "While live video can deliver a similarly engaging and thrilling experience for gamers, we knew it couldn't come at the expense of the actual gameplay, so we partnered with the best player in the space, Agora."

Through the Bunch app, Agora now powers seamless real-time communications for popular mobile games like HQ Trivia, Roblox, and Minecraft. In addition, Bunch and Agora have partnered to develop a Presence SDK that brings much of the Bunch experience directly into mobile games?out of the box and weaved into the game's experience at a deeper level. This solution is already being implemented by a few major game studios and allows players to seamlessly host group video chats and hang out before, during, or after their gaming sessions.

As the most widely adopted SDK for real-time communications that processes more than nine billion minutes of communications every month, Agora's voice and video infrastructure will allow Bunch to scale its video-powered mobile gaming platform to gamers all around the world.

About Agora.io
Founded in 2014 by Tony Zhao with headquarters in Santa Clara, CA, Agora.io is rapidly evolving and offers a suite of APIs and other building blocks that allow developers to embed real-time voice, video, and interactive broadcasting functionality to any web or mobile app. With the Agora platform, developers can leverage embedded communications to draw large audiences and increase user engagement and stickiness with real-time, low latency video.

Agora's expansive global network currently utilizes 200 distributed data centers around the world and includes a developer community of over 50,000 and growing. The company has a patented dynamic routing algorithm that ensures low latency for high-definition voice and video quality for users in over 100 countries.

The Agora real-time communication platform includes features like voice and video calling, group conferencing, live and low latency interactive broadcasting with the ability to support thousands on a single channel globally, 3D and spatial audio for gaming, and much more. Agora is providing communications services to organizations across industries, including social discovery, social media, gaming, e-commerce, telemedicine, education, financial services, customer service, and more.

For more information, please visit: www.agora.io.

SOURCE Agora.io