FGOL sees Hungry Shark installs rise by 5 million in 8 weeks as it switches to freemium

As we reported back in August, UK studio Future Games of London has been building out its business, switching its paid games to free.

Thanks to its three Hungry Shark games plus movie tie-in Hungry Shark Night, it's revealed its user base has grown by five million players in two months to 25 million.

Total downloads for the Hungry Shark series make up 96 percent of that total, with the country split being US 35 percent, UK 10 percent, Japan 8 percent and Germany 7 percent.

FGOL's MD Ian Harper also says the company has seen strong sales in Korea, with 50,000 paid downloads through operator SKTelecom's T-Store.

Go with the flow

Still, it's free-to-play that will be the company's future focus.

"The continuing growth of our network and success of IAP is further proof that the freemium model is working well for us and for our users," Harper said.

"Grabatron [FGOL's next game] will probably be our final traditional, paid for game, as it wasn't designed for freemium. After that we expect all of our games to be freemium."