India's largest carrier launches its own game subscription service

After Wynk Music and Wynk Movies, Airtel, India's leading carrier, launched Wynk Games today to allow instant access to a bevy of premium games via a monthly subscription.

Wynk Games offers a library of over 2,000 global and local games from across categories — both free and paid — with new games added every day. Once subscribed, there are no additional in-game charges and all games offer an ad-free gaming experience. Once you've downloaded a game — and you can download unlimited — you can play a game offline as well.

Announcing the launch, Kartik Sheth, CEO – Wynk, Bharti Airtel said:

By subscribing to 'Wynk Games', customers can enjoy a host of games at no additional cost – this includes many games that are typically found as 'paid' elsewhere. Also, though customers download various games for free, they often can only play a few levels of the game before hitting locked levels and getting prompted to make coin purchases to continue. 'Wynk Games' does away with all these challenges and allows customers to enjoy complete games.

At the moment, Wynk Games membership for one month is free for all Airtel customers, and ₹99/month ($1.49/month) for everyone else. It is available for only ₹29 during the beta stage. Airtel customers can simply pay from their Airtel account (prepaid balance or postpaid bill), and there's also the ability to pay via Paytm and iPayy.

Airtel has tied up with Playphone Inc., the California-based mobile social gaming network, to power the service. According to Sheth, developers require only 10 lines of code to adapt their app to the subscription platform for Wynk Games and can register online at developer.playphone.com.

Because of the nature of service, Wynk Games is not available on Google Play Store, but needs to be installed via the .apk file. Make sure you have switched on Allow installation from unknown sources setting under Settings > Security to install the service.

While you might not find your favorite big-ticket games or bestsellers from top publishers, a subscription will allow you to discover lesser-known gems. Give it a whirl, and let us know how you like it.

Abhishek Baxi