Google has had its hands busy tweaking its new darling, Google+, which is rumored to be opening to the public on July 31st. In preparation for the launch, the company has been culling user feedback (like with the sleek new “send feedback” tab in the lower-right hand corner), as well as assembling step-by-step user guides in the form of help pages.
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But SlashGear spotted a mistakenly leaked help page that foretells what G+ has in store: a new type of Stream for games. The page itself has since been taken down, but it stated: “If you’re looking for updates shared from games, check out your Games stream.” SlashGear notes that Google has already announced that third-party APIs for developers will soon be made available.
The leak is just icing on the cake for what we pretty much already knew: The games are coming.
Social gaming has been one of Facebook’s more lucrative timesucks, inasmuch that the rumor mill had the social networking giant canoodling with FarmVille creators Zynga for a revenue sharing model just a few weeks ago (which Facebook later denied).
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Still, it’s a testament to how valuable having a gaming ecosystem would be for Google+ if it really hopes to take considerable market share away from Facebook—and it’s also telling of its current focus to appeal explicitly to people and not brands (at least not yet). But will Google’s people-oriented approach help it convert the masses? Gaming in itself may not be much of a lure, but it’s the stickiness Google will need to keep users on Google+.
Chris Gayomali is a writer-reporter at TIME. Find him on Twitter at @chrigz, on Facebook, or on Google+. You can also continue the discussion on TIME’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.