Winter Nights 2013: Russian dev-powered Chillingo drives revenues from carriers, Android

The barriers to entry are low, everyone is making a mobile game. That's why you need a publisher.

This was the core argument from Ed Rumley, COO of EA-owned UK publisher Chillingo.

He kicked off day two of Winter Nights conference in St. Petersburg, Russia, with his talk 'The art of publishing indie mobile games'.

"You need a strategy. You need distribution," he stated. "Just uploading a game to an app store isn't publishing."

Homeland

This is something Russian mobile developers well know, given that a quarter of Chillingo's games are now being sourced from the country.

Rumley said that Chillingo is obsessed with polish - getting the game right for release.

"Even if a developer thinks their game is finished, we'll normally add a couple of months for polish," he explained.

"We're about less games and more quality."

The company provides a wealth of other services, from QA and monetisation services to marketing and PR, as well as having strong access to app store vendors, carriers and OEMs.

Android boom

It's also working across many platforms, from iOS and Android, to Windows Phone, and will likely release games on BlackBerry 10.

And, this week, Chillingo launched an initiative to encourage indie developers to distribute their games via Samsung's app store, for which they will get 100 percent of the revenue for the first six months.

Indeed, Rumley said that Chillingo is currently making around half of its revenue from working with carriers to provide content for Android devices.