The gaming platform from Viber, Candy Crush on Windows Phone, the game of the year according to Google and Faceebook - and other news of the week for a mobile developer

Viber messenger launched its gaming platform on iOS and Android

Today, Viber Games is available in Belarus, Ukraine, Israel, Singapore and Malaysia, and in Russia the service will be launched on December 20. In other countries, it should appear in early 2015.

The first games on Viber Games were Viber Candy Mania and Viber Pop from the studio Storm8 and Wild Luck Casino from the team Playtika. The main characters in them are recognizable characters from the sticker store Viber Sticker Market. The games have a rather active social component: competitions with friends, high score tables, the ability to send virtual gifts and much more.
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The company is not yet the names of studios that will cooperate with it, but with such an incredible DAU, like Viber, the projects are doomed to success.

Kabam leaves the browser market

Kabam began to appear quite often in our news bulletin. This time the news is rather ambiguous. Kabam sells most of its browser projects, including those that support mobile versions of games, for example, Kingdoms of Camelot. There are only games developed by third-party studios and posted on the site.

The buyer was RockYou, the developer and publisher of social games.
According to Kent Wakeford (Kent Wakeford), COO Kabam, the company intends to focus on mobile games and at the same time provide support to players of browser projects.

If all is true, then this is more good news. Companies focus on what they do best, and this should improve the quality of the games themselves, and, equally important, the level of support in the games.

Windows phone saga

Not so long ago, King officially announced that it would stop porting its games to Windows Phone. The statement caused an ambiguous reaction of the developers - is it really worth the development of a platform for the giant time and money? But the discussion soon came to naught. And - so here! - unexpected news: the game Candy Crush is out for Microsoft devices!

No messages, information, why the plans have changed - just a fait accompli. Mystery seven seals. Was it still more rational for King to finish what was already partially done, or did the management consider it unwise to miss another market? Or maybe a large corporation was very convincing in its arguments?

By the way, this is not the only hit that came on the Windown Phone in a week: a day earlier (December 10), Minecraft was launched.

Monkop Alternative TestFlight and Hockeyapp for Android

Monkop will help developers test their applications on a variety of Android devices. To do this, you need to upload the apk-file to the site, and after a while you will receive detailed statistics on compatibility, security and user experience in your inbox.

According to the description of the project on the company's website, Monkop employees work in the laboratory, where they have access to smartphones and Android tablets with almost all versions of the operating system, various screen sizes and performance.

The system not only deals with the detection of errors or shortcomings of the application, but also offers developers various ways to solve them. While the project is in beta testing, and in December, the service can be used for free.

But imagine that all sorts of applications and games with various functions and interfaces will be sent for testing. In fact, their testing differs radically. In this case, it is expected that Monkop will only be able to automatically verify that all possible screens are supported and the application is installed on each device, but no more. It will be difficult to make sure of the quality of the test or to check whether the work is really done on all the specified devices. But for sure the company will not bear responsibility for its tests.

Facebook and Google have named the best game of the year. Each his

According to Daniel Morris, the key parameters for evaluating the game of the year for Facebook were player ratings and the depth of integration with the social network. Thus, the game of the year was Cookie Jam, and the top five of the best new games were Bubble Witch 2 Saga, Candy Crush Soda Saga, Hero Defense, Kim Kardashian: Hollywood, Klondike.

Boom Beach, Crazy Taxi: City Rush, Disco Guys, Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff, Star Wars: Commander.

Google decided to compile a rating based primarily on the number of downloads. The most popular in the past year were Candy Crush Saga, Subway Surfers and Clash of Clans, Don't Tap The White Tile, Farm Heroes Saga.

Judging by the tops of the ratings, the year 2014 in the application market will be remembered by the popularity of clones, strategic games, and candy-food match3.