WildTangent

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WildTangent is a software development company that develops and publishes computer games. It was founded by Alex St. John, father of Microsoft's DirectX technology, who serves as president and CEO. The company sells 50,000 games a month.^[1] Many people find that the company's products have an adverse effect on their PC's performance. Many spyware scanners such as Spyware Doctor may pick up WildTangent as spyware.

1 Games
2 Plugin bundle
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Games

WildTangent produces both original games and advertising games for various companies, including Nike, Coke, Olay and Ford. Their games include:

Blasterball
Fate
Blackhawk Striker 2
Phoenix Assault
Polar Tubing
Groove-o-Matic
Jewel Thief
Polar Bowler
Tradewinds
Orbital
Cake Mania
Lemonade Tycoon
Lemonade Tycoon 2
Jewel Quest 2
Super Granny 3
Eets
Wild West Billy
Bass Tournement Tycoon

[edit] Plugin bundle

WildTangent produces an online gaming plugin bundle that consists of WildTangent Web Driver, WildTangent Multiplayer Library, WildTangent Updater, and WildTangent GameChannel. The bundle can be downloaded as an EXE file or through an ActiveX control from WildTangent.com. It is sometimes bundled with Windows Media Player and Winamp plugins. AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) uses WildTangent for its games service and bundles the Multiplayer Library, Updater, and WebDriver with it. The installation of the software was not stated in AIM's EULA until version 5.5.3595.

WildTangent asserts that the software bundle is safe, but many antispyware programs classify it as adware/spyware, mainly because it reports activity and games played to WildTangent servers, such as number of times played, length of time played and machine specifications, such as OS version, processor speed, RAM, and DirectX version in order to more finely tune games and services to casual gamers. It does not spy. WildTangent is preinstalled on Dell, Gateway, Compaq, and HP computers. ^[2]

The bundle is removed by the antispyware program Spybot - Search & Destroy, and it is in several Internet hosts files^[3] used by many people to block rogue and criminal sites.^[4] The antispyware program CounterSpy used to say that it's OK to keep WildTangent, but it now says that the spyware Winpipe is "possibly distributed with the adware bundler WildTangent or from a threat included in that bundler". [2]