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.

'This is no bubble': Investors react to $1.5 billion Supercell deal

Last week saw Supercell sell a 51 percent stake in its business for $1.5 billion, but there was one element that seemed to dominate the corresponding chatter: that valuation.

An investment that size essentially valued Supercell at around $3 billion – an amount that caused some to suggest that the figure represents something of a 'bubble'. But what did the experts think?

"My take here is, that there are quite significant synergies between GungHo and Supercell that sweeten the deal," offered Malte Barth, entrepreneur and advisor at Runway Capital.

"Given the strategic cooperation between the two - announced in June this year - there is real evidence for this synergy's potential. Also for Softbank, having its fingers in the pies of three blockbuster games makes an attractive investment story as a whole."

Vancouver Week: East Side Games on surviving the city's downturn without going potty

We spent most of last week taking a good look at the mobile development scene in the beautiful city of Vancouver – one that has been growing steadily as the bigger, more console or PC focused studios moved out.

East Side Games of Pot Farm fame, however, is a long time resident, having previously formed as Downtown East Side Games years earlier.

"It is a really amazing city," chief operating officer Josh Nilson told us.

"Close to the mountains for snowboarding, the ocean for surfing, lots of bars for boozing and coffee places for hipstering. We also have a very diverse culture, so people move and travel here from all over the world.

"We formed so that we could make the games that we wanted to play. We wanted to be fiercely independent and have a studio where everyone has a say in what games we make. Plus we were all highly unemployable so we had to start our own thing up."

The Charticle: 2 million downloads not enough to stop The Drowning sinking

Despite the build up, despite the hype, The Drowning has not been the runaway success many thought it would be, 2 million downloads or not. But why?

"Despite its strong graphics, innovative controls and skill-based progression, The Drowning was savaged by the hardcore gaming press; mainly for concerns over its monetisation mechanics," detailed editor-at-large Jon Jordan.

"This seemed to have a knock-on effect in terms of chart position. But a game like The Drowning was never going to compete with casual hits like Candy Crush Saga in terms of pure download numbers. Instead it needed to monetise each users at a much higher level, and this seems to be its key point of failure."

Candy crusher: How to beat the App Store's frozen charts and win

Speaking of Candy Crush Saga, last week's Mavens – our gathering of the brightest and best minds in the mobile gaming industry – debated the notion that games such as King's all-conquering casual smash are suffocating creativity.

Some argued, however, that's it's not the games themselves that are the problem, but rather how discovery mechanisms constantly route gamers towards the same old titles.

"It seems to me that unless the App Store brings in changes to its discovery mechanisms, small independent studios should investigate alternative platform opportunities for their long-term strategy," offered Jani Kahrama of Secret Exit.

"As a gross estimation of the user acquisition costs (according to Chartboost CPI heat map) you' need a budget of around $40,000 per day to get to top 50 free and sustain the position - that's $1.67 x 23,000 daily downloads.

"Opportunities for indie success stories like Badland certainly still exist, but it can be debated whether or not a small studio can (or should) rely on being repeatedly featured by the platform holder."

Aiming free-to-play games at kids is like selling supermarket chickens for £2

Top of the pile last week, however, was an article from the week before – a write up of a panel discussion at the F2P Summit in London, where one panellist compared free-to-play games with cheap supermarket chickens.

"If you thought about making food free, would we end up with a system where the food is good for the people to eat it?" said Andrew Lim of developer CMA Megacorp.

"It's like going to the supermarket and buying a chicken for £2. Do you really want people to eat that after you've had to change the way you produce a chicken in order to sell in that cheap? It's bad for the farmers, it damages the people who make it and it damages the people who eat it."

Naturally, that wasn't a view that held much weight with a crowd packed with free-to-play developers. Read the full account of what happened next here.