Microsoft announced that it has acquired the gaming startup, PlayFab, which provides cloud-based tools for game developers. The terms of the deal are yet to be disclosed. The deal is intended to strengthen Microsoft’s position against its main competitor, Amazon Web Services, which introduced a set of tools for game developers around two years ago.

“Incorporating PlayFab’s experience, growing network of game developers and powerful gaming-as-a-service platform into our product offering is an important step forward for gaming at Microsoft,” wrote Kareem Choudhry, Corporate Vice President of Gaming at Microsoft, in a blog post.

PlayFab’s offering of services includes content management, documentation, forums and A/B testing. PlayFab, which previously used AWS, will now serve as a tool to make Azure a more attractive option for game developers. Atari, Disney, Rovio and Nickleodeon are among the companies forming PlayFab’s clientele. The startup spun out of the game developer Uber Entertainment in 2014. The company is backed by prominent investors including Benchmark and Madrona Venture Group.

“Our customer’s are worldwide, and Microsoft’s global presence and world-class Microsoft Azure server infrastructure complement PlayFab’s services, making it even easier for studios to focus on building great games instead of back-end technology,” PlayFab CEO James Gwertzman, wrote in a blog post.

The startup powers more than 1200 live games and serves more than 700 million players. Furthermore, PlayFab has claimed that its processes more than 1.5 billion transactions per day and nearly 20,000 transactions per second.

“Our platform of scalable game services, game analytics and LiveOps tools are helping more than 3,000 studios progress from shipping static software to creating games that scale gracefully and evolve over time with new content, live events and frequent updates,” added James Gwertzman.

(Picture courtesy: PlayFab)