Big Indie Pitch
Experimental collaborative drawing game Mish Mash wins Big Indie Pitch at The Big Indie Fest @ ReVersed
Hamsterdam comes second as Golf Club: Wasteland takes third
Shiny
Disney releases Moana production assets for public use
Cloud data and island geometry released to provide an insight into CG production techniques
Tip Top
Global Top Round’s $300,000 accelerator program is open for submissions
Accelerator invites small studios to apply in its fourth consecutive program
Live Drop
Live.me’s new streaming app Fluxr will promote Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds esports
Streaming platform’s new app is looking to grow the mobile esports market
Localisation
5 reasons to localise your game as an indie
Applanga CTO Steffen Romer discusses why translating indie games for various markets is worthwhile
Data Klaxon
Taiwan’s pool of 14.5 million players to spend $1.3 billion in 2018
The Taiwanese games market is the 15th largest in the world
Train Of Thought
How DomiNations kept going for three years and made $150 million in the process
Big Huge Games’ CEO Tim Train on passing the $150 million revenue milestone and keeping relevant for three years
Simple
The Sims Mobile builds up $15 million in revenues after four months
59 per cent of revenues come from the US
Exclusive
NetEase’s Identity V racks up over 100 million downloads
More than 10 million people are playing every single day
Big Indie Festival
Indie is dead. Long live indie
Vlambeer's Rami Ismail discusses the history of indie games and what it means today
Competition
Win: Indie Showcase space at Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki
Demo your work to 1,200 games industry professionals this September free; worth $650
Excellent
Google Play Excellence program welcomes Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp and six other games
World of Warships: Blitz and Flutter: Starlight also feature in high-quality highlights list
Yahtzee
US publisher Scopely’s Yahtzee with Buddies lands on iMessage
The dice-rolling game will also release on Facebook Instant Games in due course
Legal
San Mateo County drops charges against Vungle founder Zain Jaffer
Child abuse and assault against the former CEO cleared by district attorney
On The App
Over 90% of Google Play revenue in South Korea comes from games
Wise App surveyed 23,000 Android smartphone users in Korea from May 1st to 31st
Not So Hollow
Nintendo Switch makes up a fifth of Hollow Knight's 1.25 million total sales
PC sales hit 1 million a day before the sidescrolling soulslike's switch launch
Return Of The King
Candy Crush dev King launches new IP Diamond Diaries Saga on iOS and Android
The physics-based linker game has been in soft-launch since October of last year
Indie Mavens
Which marketplace has been better for indie developers: The App Store or Google Play?
Our Indie Mavens weight in
Battle Royale
Fortnite Mobile has five times the revenue of PUBG but half the downloads
Fortnite made $92 million revenue in the 11 weeks ending on June 18th, compared to PUBG’s $19 million
Milan Bound
505 Games taps up Ovosonico for a new and "ambitious" IP
Italian studio is moving its headquarters to a new Milan office
Making A Splash
MAG Interactive’s Paint Hit breaks five million downloads
Real-time word game Word Domination brought in one million downloads
$$$
Keywords sets up venture capital division
Amount backing this arm unclear
Casual Games
After 370 million downloads casual dev Ilyon looks to drive more revenue from its broad portfolio
CMO Ilya Molodetsky discusses how the studio has grown over the last two years
Spin Me Right Round
Why Chinese mobile ad tech firm Mobvista spun out its monetisation platform Mintegral
EMEA business development manager Sean Parmenter discusses the company's plans and China's advertising landscape
On Your Marks
International Olympic Committee to host esports-focused forum
IOC to start discussing the future of relationships between games and sports
Go Wild
170,000 Pokemon Go trainers flood Dortmund during Safari Zone event
Trainers from across the world caught over 28.6 million Pokemon in the city last week
Mobile Game Of Thrones
Tencent snags rights to publish Game of Thrones: Winter is Coming to China
Shanghai-based developer Yoozoo originally acquired the rights from Warner Bros last year
Grand Strategy
Paradox expects 10 per cent of sales to come from mobile by 2020
Tencent-backed PC strategy giant has eyes set on mobile development and more acquisitions
Feast On This
Dead Island: Survivors gets worldwide release after two-years in soft launch
The zombie action game soft-launched on iOS in November 2016 with an Android beta following soon after
Love Better
Failbetter Games sets up Love Indies Week to celebrate developers and communities
The week-long event looks to highlight the importance of reviews on indie games
Gotta Dash
Diner Dash inspired title Mak Cun’s Adventure serves up 100k downloads in 10 days
The game puts a Malaysian twist on the diner management game
Going East
Ad sales house Venatus expands east with new Seoul office
Venatus provides ad sales services to studios including Rovio, EA and Spil Games.
What A Steel
Casual action game Hills of Steel rolls past 10 million downloads
The publishing label Round Zero was formed by Fingersoft last year
Excellent
Oasis Games heads up $3 million investment in Austrian indie developer Iron Mountain
Beijing publisher set to snag a minority stake in the company along with publishing rights to an unannounced title
I Want To Be The Very Best
Pokemon Quest catches $3million in revenues during first week on mobile
The cubed up adventure also snagged 3.5 million downloads
Catch Of The Day
Big Fish appoints 15 year industry veteran Jeff Karp as new managing director and president
Karp brings aboard executive experience from some of the industry’s biggest players
Quizzed
Indian publisher Nazara acquires minority stake in quiz studio Crimzoncode
Partnership will see Nazara publish the studio’s flagship quiz title in emerging markets
Skip, Jump
Super Mario Run leaps past $60 million worldwide revenue
American players account for nearly half of the revenue brought in since launching in 2016
Event
This week: The Big Indie Fest @ ReVersed
Vienna’s four-day celebration of gaming opens this Thursday to Sunday
Drop
Drastic drop in Google Play downloads rocks indie devs after discovery algorithm fiasco
Devs started noticing the abnormal behaviour on Thursday, June 21st
Growing Up
How Finnish studio Koukoi Games is leveraging Hollywood licenses and its own original IP to find success
CEO discusses the studio's history and where it's headed
10 Years
App Store users have spent over $4 billion on Supercell’s Clash of Clans
Supercell is just behind majority owner Tencent in terms of consumer revenue made per company
Indie Spotlight
How a brush with closure led to Broken Rules' hit Old Man’s Journey
CEO Felix Bohatsch on regaining confidence and striking the balance between work and family
Click
Nintendo Switch is played docked about as often as undocked
Individual games more likely to skew one way or the other
Chicken Dinner
Say hello to China’s biggest mobile gaming export so far - battle royale
Goodbye matching coloured candy, hello machine guns, silly hats and shrinking maps
Loot Boxes
French regulator concerned about loot boxes but concedes it isn't gambling
Paris proves less hostile to the practice than its Dutch and Belgian counterparts
Show Me The Money
VIDEO: Games industry investment power panel
Six experts deal out advice on raising money and offer their thoughts on initial coin offerings
Pgc Videos
5 Superstar Sessions from Pocket Gamer Connects San Francisco 2018
All the talks from the big talks at our even bigger event
Pgc Videos
9 videos on mobile monetisation, retention and user acquisition from Pocket Gamer Connects San Francisco 2018
All the talks from the Monetise, Retain, Acquire track
Sneak Peek
Niantic opens up preview of its AR Real World Platform
Pokemon Go developer looks to collaborate with third parties to advance augmented reality