PlayFast, the technology company leading the transition to digital distribution for games, today announced that Sean Kauppinen has joined the company in the role of CEO. Kauppinen is a 16 year veteran of the games industry and has been involved in the North American and European launches of some of the largest online games to date. He is also the founder and CEO of IDEA, the International Digital Entertainment Agency, where he will continue to serve as the main consultant to the agency’s elite clientele.

"My role with PlayFast has steadily grown since March of this year where I built the business development team with two of my most respected and talented colleagues, Charles Speyer and Grady Hannah," said Kauppinen. "Positioning the company for the next stage of growth and growing revenues are our initial goals as we firmly establish PlayFast as a leader in the digital distribution space for online games."

"Sean Kauppinen is well known for his strategic ideas and track record of successfully taking companies in the game industry to the stage where they are recognized market leaders," said Gene Berger, member of the PlayFast board of directors. "We expect great things and are firmly behind his direction of the company."

PlayFast has technology that addresses the increasing size of game downloads, which is one of the greatest challenges for the online games market today. By reducing the size of the download necessary to being playing an online game to just 3 to 5 percent of the full game, download abandonment is significantly reduced and players quickly get into the game.

The company has seen that in games over 1GB in size, the abandonment rate begins to reach 50 percent, a rate that steadily grows as the size of the download increases. By minimizing the time to play, PlayFast enables more people to start playing and interacting with the content from the game rather than waiting for files that they might not need until they reach the highest levels of the game. The efficiency maximizes the value of an online game to the publisher and ensures the highest number of players get into the game.