Indie Spotlight
Indie Spotlight: Capybara game director Dan Vader on the unlikely success of Grindstone
Why Apple Arcade was the place to be for the slice-and-dice puzzler
Minor Adjustments
Adjust appoints Bill Kiriakis and Silvia Buermann to senior global sales team
Experience from App Annie, Adobe, Zignal Labs and more
Staffing Up
Lockwood Publishing expands into Lisbon with new office
Applications are now open for those interested in joining
Simple, Faster
Hypercasual mobile game publishing platform Coda raises $4 million from LVP
London startup closes large seed round
Battle 'em All
Niantic rolls out Pokemon GO Battle League preseason worldwide
Pikachu Libre exclusively found within
Good Eggs
Ustwo gains 'business for good' B Corp status
Business synergies
Daunting Acquisition
Free Fire studio Garena acquires Phoenix Labs for an estimated $150 million
100 developers now under "Garena family"
Nintendo's Billion
Nintendo's mobile games have cleared $1 billion in revenue combined
Fire Emblem Heroes still leads the pack at $656 million
...what?
Atari pens deal to launch branded hotels across the US
First hotel breaking ground in Phoenix, AZ this year
Stateside Return
Find out what awaits you at Pocket Gamer Connects Seattle
Two-day games industry conference makes its return Stateside - read on to see what it has to offer!
Five Years Of Adventures
Hyper Hippo’s Tristan Rattink on why AdVenture Capitalist is still here after 5 years
How the studio took "the least sexy idea" and made it into a global phenomenon
Rolling Out
Huawei approved for 5G across the UK in restricted capacity
"Reassured by the UK government's confirmation"
In-app Bidding From Applovin
In-App Bidding: Boost your bottom line
AppLovin MD of Europe Daniel Tchernahovsky talks us through the company's in-app bidding solution MAX
Partnership
Square Enix and Suntory partner for Dragon Quest Walk missions via Japanese vending machines
14,000 can be found across the country
Jobs In Games
Jobs In Games: Square Enix's Lucy Shears on how to get a job as a market research analyst
"It’s awesome to be able to say I work for Square Enix"
Job News
Miniclip appoints Tencent's Jurgen Post as new CEO
Former CEO Rob Small moves to board president
Ukie Report
UK game companies employ over 16,000 people and contribute $1.75 billion to the local economy
Data collated from 2,100 games businesses in 2016
10 Years On
10 YEARS ON: iPad will be the meteor that finally wipes out small iPhone developers
Big dinosaurs will be conserved
Sales Spike
Plague Inc. developer Ndemic Creations warns players to look elsewhere for coronavirus information
"Not a scientific model"
Indie Investor Pitch
Sign ups for Interactive Futures' Indie Investor Pitch closing soon
Get 20 minutes of undivided attention on your game
New Deal
US and China proposed console tariffs postponed indefinitely
"There's a lot of work to do ahead"
Niche Success
KamaGames' Video Poker game boasts 49% Day-1 retention
US is the key market
Blizzard In The Cloud
Activision Blizzard and Google sign up for strategic "multi-year" streaming partnership
YouTube becomes exclusive streaming partner outside of China
Kwalee Pr Hires
Hypercasual studio Kwalee shakes up PR team with two new hires
Richard Paul and Matt Suckley join the team
Hypercasual Vs Gaas
Hypercasual vs GAAS - Lessons for lean #Gamedev
What can two very different development strategies can teach us as game developers
Amplified River
Leo's Fortune creator opens new studio River End Games with Amplifier Game Invest
Anders Hejdenberg heads up the new developer with Karl Broström
Fogbank Closure
Report: Disney to shutter FoxNext-owned Fogbank Entertainment following Scopely acquisition
60 jobs reportedly affected by studio closure
Most Read
Hot Five: Clash of Clans has its best month ever, Bernard Kim becomes a Mobile Legend, and what we learned at PGC London 2020
The hottest stories of last week
Usa Bound
Pocket Gamer Connects returns to Seattle in 2020!
The two-day mobile games B2B conference makes Seattle its Stateside home once more
Happy New Year
Happy Lunar New Year to our readers in China
The Year of the Rat begins
Breaking Out
Breaking out in mobile games with a team-first approach & continuous optimisation
Tripledot Studios co-founder and COO Akin Babayigit talks us through in-app bidding
Mobile Legend
Zynga president Bernard Kim honoured as a Mobile Legend at the Pocket Gamer Mobile Games Awards 2020
From Disney to EA to Zynga, Kim's impact on the mobile space is impossible to ignore
Split Up
Daybreak Games breaks off into three studios
Two based in San Diego and one in Austin
On The Move
Most of Nutaku's player base is now on mobile
Adult platform now boasts 45 million registered players
Case Closed?
Nintendo defeats Germany and Norway in court case over eShop pre-orders
The decision has been appealed
Event
Biggest Pocket Gamer Connects ever welcomed c.2,500 attendees to London this month
Representatives from almost 1,300 companies witnessed 310 speakers and held 9,300 organised meetings!
Gotta Catch Em All
Pokemon Go live events generated $249 million in tourism revenues in 2019
Further events have been added in 2020
Playful Layoffs
Playful Studios "significantly" reduces full-time staff as part of studio restructuring
Pivoting to "a more streamlined production model"
Keep Clashing
Clash of Clans had its best month for revenue ever in December 2019
Generates $158.2 million in revenues for the month
Seeing Stars
Stardew Valley clears 10 million sales in just under four years
Not bad for a mostly solo-developed indie game
Winner Dinner
Sky: Children of the Light and Call of Duty: Mobile crowned 'Games of the Year' at the PG Mobile Games Awards 2020
The good and the great from every facet of the mobile games industry celebrated at exclusive Cafe de Paris evening gala event
Topping Out
Update: EA to shutter its mobile Tetris games as N3twork takes over license
New N3twork developed Tetris game lands on iOS and Google Play
Join The Fun
Project xCloud makes its way to Canada as part of preview rollout
Invited Canadians will have access from January 29th
User Acquisition
Consumer Acquisition snaps up former Zynga head of user acquisition
John Choi has 12 years experience in the industry
Expanding To Asia
Double Eleven to open new studio in Malaysia
Recruitment begins February
Best Of The Best
Five things we learned at Pocket Gamer Connects London 2020
The top trends and interesting insights we picked up from the conference
New Record
SpecialEffect's One Special Day fundraises nearly $600,000
"Life-changing difference"
Changes
AFK Arena powers onto the global top grossing chart
Crunching the data with App Annie
Financials
MAG Interactive sees 17% revenue jump but a 40% drop in active users
Interim report detailed September to November 2019
Staffing Up
Report: TikTok's ByteDance is looking to make a major push with mobile games in 2020
Two games expected by Spring