Flaregames acquires Kopla Games, King invests in Snowprint Studios, and Pokemon GO is making $10 million a day

The hottest articles of last week

• 5 Flaregames acquires Nonstop Knight developer Kopla Games

  

  Flaregames was having a bit of a rough time as a fledgling boutique publisher - until it landed the rights to Nonstop Knight, that is.

  Now the company is cashflow positive, has tripled its revenue, and, in a move that surprised basically nobody, has acquired Nonstop's developer, Kopla Games.

  "We simply fell in love with Kopla," said Klaas Kersting, Flaregames CEO. "We share not only the vision of making awesome mobile games, but have the same values and mindset."

  "The founders have built a team with amazing throughput and we have a great working relationship. We are looking forward to many more jointly developed hit games."

  
  

• 4 "Exorbitant" Game of War update triggers IAP boycott by some high level kingdoms

  

  Game of War might be one of the biggest money-makers on the mobile market, but that doesn't mean its players are always particularly happy with the game.

  Indeed, a recent change to the game, a new March level 15, has angered some of the highest-level kingdoms to the point where they staged a one day boycott of the game's IAPs.

  "There is a general feeling that Machine Zone are not playing fair and are adding to the game for the sole purpose of wringing more money out of us," one player told PocketGamer.biz.

  There's more boycotts planned further down the line too, so maybe it's time for MZ to start listening to its players before they leave altogether.

  

• 3 King invests big in Swedish developer Snowprint Studios

  

  If there's one thing smart business people do when they come into a lot of money, its making investments into companies so they can make even more money.

  Which is just what King has done, having invested in Swedish start-up Snowprint Studios during a $5.7 million funding round.

  The investment was made by Midas Player AB, the name of one of King's Swedish companies, but both Snowprint and King are declining to comment on the investment.

  Though Snowprint did take the time to say that its ambitious first game, an RPG by the name Bifrost, has been pushed back from its 2016 release date.

  

• 2 Getting gacha right: Tips for creating successful in-game lotteries

  

  One of the key monetisation methods in Japan which is slowly finding its way over to the West is gacha, a lottery-style method that gives players random items when they buy packs and the like.

  It sounds like a tricky system to implement, but fear not - Pepe Agell, VP of Business at Chartboost, has a few tips on how to get gacha right.

  "To make a gacha work effectively in a mobile game, devs need to create an in-game economy where the value of the items within the gacha make using it worthwhile, no matter what the user wins in the lottery," he writes.

  

• 1 Pokemon GO generating $10 million daily revenue without cannibalising the market

  

  Everyone in analytics is taking a bash at how much Pokemon GO is making in daily revenues, though the general consensus is definitely "a lot".

  The latest firm to enter the big numbers brigade is App Annie, which reckons the game is generating $10 million a day without cannibalising the rest of the market.

  That's not hugely surprising - high-spending players are unlikely to spend highly across a number of different games, after all.

  Instead, the main impact on the market that App Annie suggests Pokemon GO will have is a surge in AR games, or at the very least games implement even a basic form of AR.