Hot Five

Hot Five: Supercell soars to $2.4 million a day, AppGratis fights back, and Google Play opens up to developers

Last week's top five stories

Hot Five: Supercell soars to $2.4 million a day, AppGratis fights back, and Google Play opens up to developers
Welcome to PocketGamer.biz's weekly rundown of the stories clocking up the hits, picking up the click-throughs and generally keeping the advertisers happy by serving up page views.

Or, if you'd prefer, the top five stories currently dominating our readers' attention.

Each week, we'll be counting down the biggest news from the previous seven days, giving just a glimpse of the industry's big issues, from five to one.



Google Play now allows developers to reply to user reviews

Has the ability for Android developers to respond to Google Play user reviews been added as a new feature or not? It would appear no-one is quite sure.

While Twitter last week played host to developers tweeting about the 'new' feature, it soon became clear that replying to user reviews had initially been unlocked for Android studios at the end of January.

It would seem, however, that Google has been rolling the feature out, almost developer by developer, rather than all at once.



Sulake and IKON Graphics veterans combine to form Small Giant Games

Helsinki has another startup and, as editor-at-large Jon Jordan said last week, it's a testament to the strength of the Finnish development scene in recent years that it's been founded by local industry veterans.

"Two are from Habbo Hotel developer Sulake: CEO Otto Nieminen was its senior product director, while CTO Markus Halttunen was Sulake's CTO," detailed Jordan.

"The other half of the team - Ilkka Juopperi and Tommi Vallisto - come from design outfit IKON Graphics."

Small Giant Games is now working on its first iOS title, although few details have yet been released.



Exclusive: AppGratis launches petition against App Store ejection, gets 400,000 emails of support

Does app discovery platform AppGratis have any hope of ever being restored to the App Store? It seems unlikely at this point, though the French firm isn't giving up without a fight.

As revealed exclusively to PocketGamer.biz by CEO Simon Dawlat, AppGratis launched a petition designed to show Apple that its considerable userbase would like to see the platform returned to the App Store.

"We reached out to our users and asked for their public support because it's important everybody understands AppGratis is first and foremost a community, a consumer service, an iOS app loved and used by millions in the world," said Dawlat in the statement.

"And at the end of the day, it's always the end user's voice that matters most."

Days after the launch of the petition, Dawlat took to AppGratis' blog to dismiss claims that his platform had ever used bots farms or "anything shady" to secure downloads for apps that tapped into the service.



The Charticle: How Injustice: Gods Among Us hit $1 million in US App Store revenue

Why are movie licenses holding up so well on the App Store?

The latest game to make a mark is Injustice: Gods Among Us, which – as news editor James Nouch reported in last week's Charticle - "shot straight into #4 on the US App Store's top free apps chart, behind Sonic Dash, Vine and Candy Crush Saga. 24 hours later, the game had reached pole position."

"It remained the most downloaded free app on the App Store for two more days before installs began to drop off slightly," he continued.

"And according to Distimo estimates based on data from 13 April, the game is currently generating around 100,000 installs a day in the US alone."



Cash of Clans: Supercell's revenue hits $2.4 million a day

Six months after Supercell's daily revenue was pegged at $500,000, the Finnish studio has now revealed it's taking in almost four times that figure.

According to an interview with CEO Ilkka Paananen with Forbes, Supercell's Hay Day and Clash of Clans are now bringing in $2.4 million a day, with Paananen saying the studio's secret is to "design something great, something that users love."

"After working for big companies and shipping over 165 games across 12 platforms, we all wanted to build a different kind of game company, the one we'd always dreamed of," Paananen told PocketGamer.biz as part of a recent studio profile.

"Quite simply, we thought that the best people make the best games and our main goal should be to get those people and create create a zero-bureaucracy type of environment for them. That was our inspiration."

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With a fine eye for detail, Keith Andrew is fuelled by strong coffee, Kylie Minogue and the shapely curve of a san serif font.