Monument Valley, Crossy Road and Minecraft announce monetisation milestones

It's been a busy week for PocketGamer.biz.

Part of the 1,100 attendees across the two day Pocket Gamer Connects London 2015 conference, we were fully involved in moderating, talking on panels, interviewing people, judging in the Big Indie Pitch, and even PechaKucha-ing about Apples.

And we also found time to keep you up-to-date about what was going on in the mobile games industry...

Pocket Gamer Connects London 2015

Kicking off our PG Connects London coverage, Neogames' Suvi Latva provided her Top tips for surviving and thriving at game conferences.

• Highlights from the conference included Peter Molyneux arguing that mobile games don't make players feel connected, Nicoll Hunt tell us that the way to build a successful one-man-band is "to not give a fuck", while Jas Purewal warned that new EU rules means free-to-play is a legal minefield.
• Dundee developer Tag Games also launched its open source ChilliSource engine at the conference.

Industry voices

• We had three Mavens groups reporting during the week. Our Mobile Mavens talked about their hopes and fears for 2015, while the Indie Mavens discussed Monument Valley and piracy levels on Google Play. Finally, the Monetizer Mavens provided editor-at-large Jon Jordan with some questions for his Monetizer Mavens panel debate during PG Connects London 2015.
• In other news, Pixelberry's Oliver Miao revealed in his regular development diary How bullying came to High School Story.
• We spoke to Behaviour's Jimmy Gendron about the Canadian studio's decision to enter mobile gaming. It announced it had acquired the Zombie Farm IP and is also making a game based on Dreamworks' HOME movie.
• Studio Pepwuper's Brandon Wu wrote about Getting client work to fund your game.
• And Stateside columnist Carter Dotson asked If a blue shell is inbound for market leader Apple?

User acquisition, retention, and monetisation

• There was a lot of data from Monument Valley developer ustwo, prompting us to ask Does Monument Valley prove China can be a paid game market? and query whether Monument Valley is a massive success or a demonstration of paid games' upside cap?
• Hipster Whale announced Crossy Road had raked in $1 million on iOS with Unity's incentivised video ads.
• DeltaDNA's Mark Robinson provided some Killer insights to monetize your players.
• Mojang announced Minecraft: Pocket Edition had crossed the 30 million downloads mark.
• China's top grossing Android game for November was revealed as DOTA Legend.
• Palringo CMO Magnus Alm spoke about the powerful convergence of mobile messaging and gaming.

Funding, acquisitions, personnel and shuttering

• Ubisoft's graduate program opened for business in 2015.
• The Riccitiello-isation of Unity begins with a new CFO from EA.
• A Gamasutra report revealed a small dip in US developer interest about mobile games as the consoles rebound.
• Kabam bought LA studios TapZen and Magic Pixel Games.
• DeltaDNA opened the doors of its new San Francisco office, and announced new hires.
• Bandai Namco America hired EA Mobile vet Jeferson Valadares to hone its product development.