Kaneva, LLC is a privately owned American

video game company The video game industry is the tertiary and quaternary sectors of the entertainment industry that specialize in the development, marketing, distribution, monetization, and consumer feedback of video games. The industry encompasses dozens ...

based in

Atlanta Atlanta ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Georgia (U.S. state), most populous city in the U.S. state of Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia. It is the county seat, seat of Fulton County, Georg ...

Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the South Caucasus * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the southeastern United States Georgia may also refer to: People and fictional characters * Georgia (name), a list of pe ...

and founded in 2004 by Christopher Klaus and Greg Frame. ''Kaneva'' was a 3D

virtual world A virtual world (also called a virtual space or spaces) is a Computer simulation, computer-simulated environment which may be populated by many simultaneous users who can create a personal Avatar (computing), avatar and independently explore th ...

that supported 2D web browsing,

social networking A social network is a social structure consisting of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), networks of Dyad (sociology), dyadic ties, and other Social relation, social interactions between actors. The social network per ...

and shared media. In 2004, Kaneva worked with

's Department of Economic Development to draft a new law that would promote

video game development Video game development (sometimes shortened to gamedev) is the process of creating a video game. It is a multidisciplinary practice, involving programming, design, art, audio, user interface, and writing. Each of those may be made up of more speci ...

in Georgia. It passed in 2004. On 1 July 2016, Kaneva's

website A website (also written as a web site) is any web page whose content is identified by a common domain name and is published on at least one web server. Websites are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, such as news, educatio ...

suffered a

data breach A data breach, also known as data leakage, is "the unauthorized exposure, disclosure, or loss of personal information". Attackers have a variety of motives, from financial gain to political activism, political repression, and espionage. There ...

that exposed 3.9 million user records. The breach was reported on December 9, 2023. The data included

email address An email address identifies an email box to which messages are delivered. While early messaging systems used a variety of formats for addressing, today, email addresses follow a set of specific rules originally standardized by the Internet Enginee ...

es, usernames, dates of birth and salted MD5 password hashes. On 14 November 2016, ''Kaneva'''s online world was shut down, with its "2d" social networking site closely following.

History

Kaneva was founded to develop a massively multi-player online game (

MMOG A massively multiplayer online game (MMOG or more commonly MMO) is an online video game with a large number of players to interact in the same online game world. MMOs usually feature a huge, persistent open world, although there are games th ...

). In late 2004, Kaneva released the first version of the ''Kaneva Game Platform''. Kaneva later decided to use its own technology to develop a virtual world that combined

video sharing An online video platform (OVP) enables users to upload, convert, store, and play back video content on the Internet, often via a private server structured, large-scale system that may generate revenue. Users will generally upload video content vi ...

, social networking and 3D environments. In 2005, Kaneva started development on ''The'' ''Virtual World of Kaneva'', the company's flagship product. ''The Virtual World of Kaneva'' was released into

beta Beta (, ; uppercase , lowercase , or cursive ; or ) is the second letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 2. In Ancient Greek, beta represented the voiced bilabial plosive . In Modern Greek, it represe ...

in mid-2006. A new website was created in April 2006 to allow the community of game developers to collaborate on their Kaneva Game Platform projects. This site was named the "Kaneva Elite Developers Site". The "Elite Developers" program was discontinued with their

source code In computing, source code, or simply code or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer. Since a computer, at base, only ...

release in November 2009. The source code is hidden, but was available to everyone on the resources page on their developer website which is now defunct and no longer available to the public. In the first quarter of 2010, Kaneva released their Kaneva 3D Applications and their 3D App Game Developer Program, which is now defunct and available to developers. Kaneva shifted from featured MMO development to smaller scale 3D application development which closely mirrors the very popular

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

applications. On 14 November 2016, ''Kaneva'' was shut down, along with its online community shortly after. In 2017, the company launched a new game, ''CasinoLife Poker'', for

mobile platforms A mobile operating system is an operating system used for smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, smartglasses, or other non-laptop personal mobile computing devices. While computers such as laptops are "mobile", the operating systems used on them a ...

and as a

Facebook app The Facebook Platform is the set of services, tools, and products provided by the social networking service Facebook for third-party developers to create their own applications and services that access data in Facebook. The current Facebook Pla ...

Competitors

The original ''Kaneva'' platform had several competitors during its lifetime, including

Roblox Roblox (, ) is an online game platform and game creation system developed by Roblox Corporation that allows users to program and play games created by themselves or other users. It was created by David Baszucki and Erik Cassel in 200 ...

, OSgrid.org, Smallworlds,

Entropia Universe ''Entropia Universe'' is a massively multiplayer online (MMORPG) virtual universe designed by the Swedish software company MindArk, based in Gothenburg. ''Entropia'' uses a micropayment business model, in which players may buy in-game curren ...

, Utherverse,

IMVU IMVU (, stylized as imvu) is an online virtual world and social networking site. IMVU was founded in 2004 and was originally backed by venture investors Menlo Ventures, AllegisCyber Capital, Justin Greene, Bridgescale Partners, and Best Buy Capit ...

Active Worlds ''Active Worlds'' is an online virtual world, developed by ActiveWorlds Inc., a company based in Newburyport, Massachusetts, and launched on June 28, 1995. Users assign themselves a name, log into the ''Active Worlds'' universe, and explore 3D vi ...

, vSide,

Second Life ''Second Life'' is a multiplayer virtual world that allows people to create an Avatar (computing), avatar for themselves and then interact with other users and user-created content within a multi-user online environment. Developed for person ...

and

Twinity ''Twinity'' is a 3D computer graphics, 3D online virtual world. Initially developed by Metaversum GmbH, it is currently held by ExitReality. The game offers its population, called Twinizens, to navigate around virtual (historical) versions of re ...

. ''CasinoLife Poker'' had several competing games offering poker in virtual reality, such as ''Casino VR Poker'', ''Poker Show VR'' and ''VR Poker''.

References

External links

Official website
{{Video game engines , state=autocollapse American companies established in 2004 Video game companies of the United States Virtual world communities Companies based in Atlanta Video game companies established in 2004