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Learning from Taylor Swift, Alibaba to spend big, and Nokia and Jolla both announce Android tablets

The past 7 days in bite-sized portions

Learning from Taylor Swift, Alibaba to spend big, and Nokia and Jolla both announce Android tablets
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As anyone who's been working in gaming for longer than a week knows all too well, our industry can't go more than seven days without cooking up another controversy.

This week it was developer ustwo, and its beautiful Escher inspired puzzler Monument Valley, at the eye of the storm.

After the studio chose to charge for an update containing eight new levels, a small band of consumers made it their mission to bring down the game's App Store review score. That move sparked a debate as to whether or not ustwo had done the right thing.

In a bid to get to the heart of the problem, we asked our group of mobile mavens - which includes ustwo's Dan Gray - whether it was okay for the firm to charge for Monument Valley: Forgotten Shores?

Moving away from that doom and gloom, we spoke to New York studio Dots to find out how it learned to thrive on mobile, while we also handed out prizes to Critical Force and Fluff Stuff Studios: the winners of our Big Indie Pitches at Slush and Apps World 2014.

As always, there's more where that came from, so hold on to your hats because its time for another Week That Was.

Industry voices
User acquisition, retention, and discovery
Tools & Platforms

Monetisation
  • Following 300% Asia growth in Q3, Adjust opens offices in China and Japan.
  • US outfit Robotoki revealed it will pull the free-to-play element from its forthcoming debut release Human Element, cancelling its publishing agreement with Nexon as a result.
Funding, acquisitions, personnel and shuttering
yt
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Chris Kerr
Chris Kerr
What do you call someone who has an unhealthy obsession with video games and Sean Bean? That'd be a 'Chris Kerr'. Chris is one of those deluded souls who actually believes that one day Sean Bean will survive a movie. Poor guy.