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How Hitcents defeated the pirates and built a business in China

Stuart Westphal's talk from PG Connects Helsinki

How Hitcents defeated the pirates and built a business in China

At Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki 2014, Stuart Westphal from Hitcents spoke about the US-based developer's decision to set up a foreign-owned company in China.

The move came following the massive success of the company's DrawStickman app in China, which quickly gained 18 million users in the country.

'The Chinese market was enjoying our game but we're weren't making any money because of the pirates,' says Westphal.

After a failed attempt to work with a local partner resulted in that company "taking our money and running", Hitcents decided it needed to set up in China from scratch.

It was a difficult move, particularly in terms of dealing with Chinese business regulation, but having overcomes these hurdles, the fully localised and culturalised version of DrawStickman has been successful.

You can see all the talks from Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki 2014 here

Pocket Gamer Connects is the biggest mobile games show in Europe, which brings together the best speakers and delegates from across the industry and from all over the world.

To-date, Pocket Gamer Connects has been held in London and Helsinki, and the show will be heading back to the UK in January 2015.

To find out more about the latest show, head on over to www.pgconnects.com.


Contributing Editor

A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.