Hot Five

Hot Five: Rovio cancels Phoenix Rangers, Apple rejects Facebook Gaming App, and we speak to Supercell's Hay Day Pop designer

The hottest articles of last week

Hot Five: Rovio cancels Phoenix Rangers, Apple rejects Facebook Gaming App, and we speak to Supercell's Hay Day Pop designer

To help you keep on top of a busy news cycle and the latest hot topics in mobile gaming, each week we round up the five most-read stories on PocketGamer.biz.

Read on and digest…

1. Remote Working: Supercell's Hay Day Pop designer Ayushman Datta Gupta on developing games from home

As part of our weekly job series, we spoke with Supercell games designer Ayushman Datta Gupta regarding life under lockdown and what it's like to be working on Supercell's upcoming puzzler Hay Day Pop.

2. Report: Apple has rejected Facebook Gaming app at least five times already

Apple has reportedly rejected Facebook's Gaming app at least five times since the social network began submitting it to the App Store in February.

Apple rejecting apps containing other games is nothing particularly new. Subscription-based service GameClub, which recently launched on Android, was rejected by Apple 127 times before it gained approval

3. Harry Potter: Magic Awakened launches open beta in China

NetEase has opened sign-ups for an open beta to its upcoming game Harry Potter: Magic Awakened in China.

Magic Awakened takes place several years after the second wizarding war and sees the protagonist receive a letter of acceptance to Hogwarts School Witchcraft and Wizardy before beginning their journey.

4. Exclusive: Rovio cancels in-development puzzle RPG Phoenix Rangers after seven months in soft launch

Rovio has revealed that the studio has cancelled Phoenix Rangers, a monster-collecting puzzle RPG planned for mobile devices.

The Finnish company has confirmed that all development on the title has stopped, and the game has been taken down from app stores. Phoenix Rangers will still be playable for any users that downloaded the game, with servers being kept open until autumn this year.

5. Tencent and The Pokemon Company debut Pokemon Unite

The Pokemon Company and Tencent today debuted Pokemon Unite, a strategic team-based battle game for mobile and Switch.

The "free-to-start" game feature five-versus-five multiplayer combat that sees players scoring points as they look to level up their Pokemon. From this, Pokemon can learn new moves and evolve to the next evolution stage.


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Deputy Editor

Matthew Forde is the deputy editor at PocketGamer.biz and also a member of the Pocket Gamer Podcast. You can find him on Twitter @MattForde64 talking about stats, data and everything pop culture related - particularly superheroes.