Today SCVNGR, the check-in game that may just be the one location-based service to succeed next to the goliath Foursquare, announced that the game is now global. It was previously limited to the United States.

Location-based games such as SCVNGR have a great deal of potential as marketing tools, and can be a very unique and cutting-edge way to get new (and new types) of customers in your door.

SCVNGR also announced a partnership with Google Places API, meaning instead of having to have users populate the location database like Foursquare did, the entire global catalog of Places that already exists on Google is now available to SCVNGR players. Normally, any location-based startup has a giant hurdle to jump in terms of adding physical businesses and locations to their database, but SCVNGR handily bypassed that by connecting to the Google API.

SCVNGR claims 500,000 players currently but is set to grow that number rapidly now that they have launched globally.