Metaplace, Inc.

Areae was founded in 2006 by Raph Koster to develop a new software platform to democratize the development and deployment of virtual worlds. This platform was called Metaplace.

Shortly after Metaplace (the platform) was announced at the TechCrunch40 conference in 2007, the company formally changed their name to Metaplace, Inc. to avoid confusion (and pronunciation difficulties).

In January of 2010, the company shifted focus away from providing a community platform and toward development of social games using the Metaplace platform that they had developed and began producing successful games on Facebook.

On July 8 of 2010, Metaplace, Inc. was acquired by Playdom (at the time, the 3rd developer of social games). Three weeks later, Playdom was acquired by The Walt Disney Company.