• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, August 18, 2016

Facing increasing competition from mobile app stores, Facebook has enlisted Unity Technologies to offer more tools and services to game developers.

With the help of the game engine, Facebook plans to build a downloadable desktop gaming platform, which will let publishers offer iOS and Android games via desktop and mobile.

Per the expanded partnership, Facebook is also promising to help Unity developers more effectively reach gamers on its network.

“Unity will integrate support for the Facebook platform, including an all-new PC gaming platform currently in development,” Jack King Choi, a product marketing manager at Facebook, notes in a new blog post.

Presently, Facebook boasts some 650 million monthly active gamers. Last year, Choi said the social giant paid out more than $2.5 billion to Web-game developers alone.

To get things started, Choi and his team will select a limited group of developers to receive immediate access to a closed-alpha build of the new export to Facebook functionality in Unity version 5.4.

Throughout the testing period, new developers are expected to be on-boarded on an ongoing basis.

Facebook previously joined up with Unity to help support Oculus VR game development.