The story behind India's first games company, Critical Ops hits 10 million downloads, and keeping games alive

The hottest articles of last week

• 1 Rovio cancels Angry Birds Football after seven months in soft launch

  

  Rovio has soft-launched and fully released a plethora of Angry Birds spin-off over the years, but unfortunately Angry Birds Football never quite made it to its full launch.

  The title was made by New Star Games, the studio behind the popular New Star Soccer.

  But the developer hasn’t been quite able to replicate that success with Angry Birds Football however, and Rovio has taken the decision to cancel the game.

  The title will remain active until December 15th, at which point all the servers will be closed.

  
  

• 2 How to get a job at Rovio Stockholm

  

  The Rovio Stockholm team is set for a new era after its GM Patrick Liu left the studio in October to join Spotify and was replaced by Reginaldo Valadares at the helm.

  Given the big change at the Angry Birds 2 developer, we caught up with the new GM to discuss how to get a job at the studio, as part of our regular series of HR interviews with developers across the globe.

  Valadares spoke about the studio’s creative culture and how it recently brought in the most interns it has ever had.

  
  

• 3 How Glu Hyderabad's live ops keeps games alive

  

  During the recent NASSCOM Game Developer Conference in India, we took the opportunity to speak to Glu Mobile Hyderabad Senior Producer Nilesh Engineer about running the live operations of numerous popular mobile games.

  The studio is responsible for the live operations of games like Terminator Genisys: Guardian, Deer Hunter, Dino Hunter, Sniper X and Tap Sports Football.

  Its task is to ensure these games stay successful for the long-term, although in the case of Sniper X, it took things a step further and turned around its fortunes completely.

  It’s an interesting look at why live operations are so important and how, with the right approach, games can grow over time.

  
  

• 4 Mobile shooter Critical Ops hits 10 million downloads before leaving soft launch

  

  Mobile shooter Critical Ops is a hugely popular game for mobile, so it’s no wonder it was one of our most read stories of the month.

  The game, developed by Critical Force Entertainment, has surpassed more than 10 million downloads since it was first soft-launched in October 2015.

  What’s even more impressive about the feat though is that the game is still in soft launch.

  Its impressive stats are a positive sign for a studio focused on building up a successful eSports business on mobile.

  
  

• 5 The story behind India’s first games company and the industry’s rapid rise

  

  India’s mobile games industry is rising rapidly and is reportedly set to be worth $1.1 billion by 2020.

  But its games industry wasn’t always so popular. In fact, in 1997 there was only one game studio in the country.

  Dhruva Interactive founder Rajesh Rao, speaking to us at the NASSCOM Game Developer Conference 2016, described how the fledging industry was so new that in some cases new employees had never seen a console in their lives.

  Since those days however, Rao has grown his own business, set up one of India’s biggest games conferences and helped spur on the country's games industry to new heights.