They had previously released the framework used for their download-able games (built with Visual C++) for anyone to use free of charge.
Sadly, they are discontinuing support for this and hopefully moving it to SourceForge as open-source.
"The PopCap Developer program has had a good run, but we've been unable to spare the developer time required to keep the Framework (and related tools) up to date here, and it doesn't make sense for us to publicly support an increasingly old version of it.It's nice to see companies so open with their technologies.
That being said, everyone who is currently using the Framework may continue to do so, and we plan on making the Framework available on SourceForge so the developer community can continue to have access to it and even support and enhance it as they (you) see fit.
Details of the SourceForge move will be forthcoming, but the plan is to move toward shutting down this site on May 1st. If anyone is interested in stepping forward to volunteer to host the message archive as a knowledge base, please let me know."
-Brian Fiete
CTO & CoFounder, PopCap Games
[Source: developer.popcap.com]
While on the topic of PopCap, I would like to talk about their recent move to add their games (at the moment on Bejeweled and Peggle) into another game, World of Warcraft (WoW) as add-ons.
Their first attempt, Bejeweled was a direct port that allowed you to pass time in-game and has some nice extras like keeping highscore for you, your friends and your guild.
Their second attempt, Peggle has a lot more integration with WoW like using WoW's dueling feature to start a two player Peggle game, distributing loot based using Peggle, and adding WoW concept of talent trees into Peggle.
Games-within-games is nothing new, but having another commercial companies making the game-within-game is new. PopCap is probably doing this as a form of in-game advertising and hoping to tap into WoW's 11 million active subscribers. I am curious as to what this will lead to.
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