The London-based game studio behind Candy Crush Saga today announced that it’s launching Pet Rescue Saga on iOS and Android early this summer, while also revealing that it has more than 70 million daily active users (DAU) across all platforms — mobile, Facebook and web.

Pet Rescue Saga, which first launched on Facebook in October 2012, joins Candy Crush Saga and Bubble Witch Saga as the third mobile title from the U.K. company. Pet Rescue Saga is a match-3 puzzler in the same vein as the mega popular Candy Crush Saga. The title will launch with more than 72 levels, providing cross-platform gameplay across mobile and Facebook, meaning a user’s game state including their leaderboards, scores and progress remain synchronized. Cross-platform play has been a feature that has shown to be very successful for King’s mobile games so far. Pet Rescue Saga for mobile was developed by King’s Malmo studio.

King’s 70 DAU is significant because it topped Zynga’s 52 million DAU, which it announced during its latest earnings call. When comparing the companies, King is a private company with 450 employees, while on the other hand, Zynga is a public company with a much larger workforce. (more…)

Social games developer and publisher Zynga today announced the release of its seventh game under the “With Friends” brand, an endless runner titled Running With Friends. The game should be available to download for free from the Apple App Store starting tonight and tomorrow morning.

Set in a cartoon-style re-imagining of Pamplona, Spain, the game puts players into the town’s famous Running of the Bulls Festival. Gameplay is very similar to Temple Run, Vector, Subway Surfers, and other games in the endless runner genre. It’s particular similar to the latter in that the device is oriented vertically, with the camera behind the character, allowing the player to swipe and tap in order to dodge obstacles across three lanes.

While it may be similar to other endless runners, Running With Friends is also adding several new features to the formula to keep it fresh. The social element of games has always been Zynga’s primary concern and Running With Friends is no different, allowing users to do as the title suggests and play with their friends asynchronously. The level for each round of the game is randomly generated, but players who compete with friends will compete over the same randomly generated level. The player who gets the highest score by running farther and collecting more stars, wins.

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Real-money gaming is now reality in the U.S. with Skillz, a first-of-its-kind multiplayer tournament platform, whivh gives players the chance to compete for real money and virtual currency in mobile games of skill. The platform launched today in beta for Android.

“We’re bringing real-money gaming to the U.S. right now, and we’re the first people to do that,” Andrew Paradise, co-founder and CEO of Skillz, tells Inside Mobile Apps.

Skillz enables games of skill to be played in cash tournaments in 36 states — such as California, New York, Texas and more — as well as virtual currency tournaments in any game worldwide. All a mobile developer has to do to enable cash and free multiplayer tournaments is integrate Skillz’s SDK, which can be implemented in as short as an hour to three work days.

Skillz has come out of stealth with 10 developers with 10 games on board, including Gnarly Games with GnarBike Trials, Spooky House Studios with Bubble Explode, Rocketmind with Big Sport Fishing 3D Lite and more. The first batch of titles run the gamut genre-wise, with genres like endless runners, bubble shooters, mini golf and more.

The obvious question to ask is how did Skillz make real-money gaming legal in the U.S.? The easiest answer is that real-money gaming via a skills competition has been legal for years in most states. First, it’s important to define the difference between a skill versus a chance game. On one end of the spectrum is a skill game like chess and on the other end is a chance game like roulette. The legal definition of a skilled game is if a skilled player predominantly beats an unskilled player about 75 percent of the time. Examples of games of skill where a cash competition is legal include chess tournaments, running marathons, golf tournaments, fishing tournaments, esports tournaments for games like StarCraft 2 and Call of Duty, even the arcade game Golden Tee, and more.

“One of the things we created is a way to statistically verify the level of skill versus chance in a game, and so one of the things we do is plug in these virtual currency tournaments into a given game and then we’ll run virtual currency tournaments and gather data,” Paradise says. “Basically, we can look at how often skilled players beat unskilled players and then determine if a game is skill versus chance.” (more…)

Yesterday, during Zynga’s Q1 2013 earning call, CEP Mark Pincus announced the launch of Draw Something 2. The game is available to download for free exclusively on the Apple App Store. An Android version is coming soon.

The first Draw Something was a simple draw-and-guess game where players compete against each other to create pictures based on stimulus words. The game won the award for Best Social Network Game at last night’s Game Developer’s Choice Online Awards ceremony. It was the first time Zynga managed to take home a GDC Online Award, even though its games have been nominated for the past two years.

Draw Something 2 introduces a live feed where players can share, ‘like’ or comment on drawings, and follow friends, artists and celebrities. It also adds a collection of new drawing tools like new patterns, textures and colors.

Television personality Ryan Seacrest first revealed the existence of Draw Something 2 in March, when he posted a screenshot from the game to his Twitter account. Seacrest and Draw Something have long been associated with one another, especially following the revelation that Seacrest was producing a Draw Something-themed gameshow for CBS. Former Zynga vice president and Omgpop CEO Dan Porter was quick to confirm Seacret’s claim that the public was checking out some legit Draw Something 2 artwork, responding with the game’s official logo.

Zynga’s acquisition of Omgpop made some serious headlines last year, especially since the deal was reportedly worth somewhere around $200 million. Earlier this month, shortly after the announcement of Draw Something 2, we also learned that Zynga’s New York office general manager Dan Porter and former CEO and founder of OMGPOP had left Zynga.

“Developing and launching games is a team effort, and we’re proud of the great work the Zynga New York team has done with Draw Something 2,” said Zynga chief operating office David Ko, in a statement. “Our follow up to the original hit is even more social and engaging, and we’re excited to get it into the hands of our players globally. We thank Dan Porter for his efforts in making the Draw Something franchise a success and wish him well in his future endeavors. We’re proud to see talent like Sean Kelly take a bigger leadership role as the head of our New York studio and lead the team to the global launch of Draw Something 2.”

Sean Kelly, who’s been with the company since 2009, stepped in for Porter as the head of Zynga’s New York studio. Kelly’s official title is the vice president of mobile and general manager of Zynga New York, reporting to Zynga’s senior vice president of mobile Travis Boatman.

Inside Social Games will publish a full review of Draw Something 2 soon.

Social-mobile gaming developer Digital Chocolate today launched its first real-money gaming title Slots! Pocket UK for iOS in the U.K.

Powered by real-money gaming platform Betable, Slots! Pocket UK is a slots game that allows U.K. users the option to wager either real money or virtual currency and chips on pulls of the slot machine. Betable first announced its partnership with Digital Chocolate back in November 2012. Digital Chocolate is one of 10 developers so far to partner with Betable for its real-money gaming platform, which is still a private beta program. Betable handles all the real-money aspects of the game on the backend, including compliance, fraud prevention, identity checks, wagering, and gambling results, while Digital Chocolate can focus on the development of the actual game. In order for players to gamble with real money, they must be authenticated with Betable by signing up, depositing money, and more.

“[Betable] helped us leapfrog the whole race into real-money gaming by allowing us to partner with them on their platform, and of course, they have the license in the U.K. to do real-money gaming,” Jason Loia, chief operating officer of Digital Chocolate, told Inside Mobile Apps.

Pangalore announces ZooVale — Social role-playing games developer Pangalore announced ZooVale, a cross-platform HTML5 title featuring animal characters rendered in cartoon-style 2D graphics. The game will allow players to build a village and breed animals to fight an evil witch. The game will be available on desktops and mobile devices via Pangalore’s portal.

Lorne Abony Joins Glu Mobile – Mobile game developer and publisher Glu Mobile announced that Mood Media Corporation’s CEO and Chairman Lorne Abony has joined the company’s board of directors as its chairman of strategy committee. Glu also announced that Matthew Drapkin of Becker Drapkin Partners has stepped down as an Independent Director.

Zynga releases War of the Fallen – The social gaming giant has released its latest card battler game War of the Fallen. It follows Zynga’s previous card game, Ayakashi: Ghost Guild, but is developed specifically with western markets in mind. One way in which the game aims to appeal to new players is by better explaining the underlying rules of the genre that are taken for granted in eastern markets, where card battle and collecting games are more popular. The game also encourages social interaction with Guild Force, a mechanic which boosts the player’s abilities when they connect and play with friends.

TAITO, Square Enix releases Crime Connection — Square Enix subsidiary TAITO announced the release of Crime Connection, a crime-themed city management sim. The game, which will be released worldwide using GREE’s platform, is available to download from the Apple App Store and Google Play.

Gemini Rue hits iOS — The award winning indie adventure game developed by Wadjet Eye Games Gemini Rue is now available to download from the Apple App Store for a special price of $3.99 (normally $4.99). Developed by Joshua Nuernberger, Gemini Rue is set in a bleak future dominated by the corrupt Boryokudan crime syndicate. Alternating between ex-assassin Azriel Odin and hospital inmate Delta-Six, players must uncover the secrets both protagonists are guarding and uncover their unlikely bond.

Social games giant Zynga announced on its official blog today that the its first real money betting games ZyngaPlusPoker and ZyngaPlusCasino will launch tomorrow in the U.K.

As the name implies, ZyngaPlusPoker is an online poker room which offers a variety of games, tournaments and “buy-ins at every level.” ZyngaPlusCasino is comprosed of more than 160 slots games and table games like blackjack, roulette and a FarmVille-themed slots games. Both games are launching with special offers that give players real-money bonuses and free cash on deposit.

Both games will use a single, shared wallet that works with the web versions as well as the downloadable clients. Mobile version of the games are planned for later this year.

We knew that real money betting games from Zynga were going to come out in the U.K. sometime in the first half of 2013 ever since the company announced its partnership with bwin.party, a real money games operator.

This is the second social games partnership for bwin.party, following its deal with sports social game developer Nordeus announced in September. Bwin.party has also set aside $50 million for its own social game development, with the funding being used to establish a new studio called Win. In Feburary, Win launched its first game, Slots Craze, worldwide for Facebook and iOS.

Many have touted the revenue potential of real-money gaming as a means to “save” Zynga from a total collapse of its social games business. Others, though – including Inside Social Games – have expressed skepticism that Zynga’s current non-real money audience could be converted to real-money gamers. At the moment, Zynga’s shares are up by more than 5 percent in After Hours trading since the announcement.

Former Zynga Austin vice president and general manager Andrew Busey is partnering up with mobile developer Chaotic Moon Studios to create Team Chaos, a new mobile gaming startup. The first game from the freshly minted studio is Elements: Broken Lands, a free-to-play collectible card game (CCG) for iOS.

“The rise of CCGs on mobile has been incredible,” Busey tells GameIndustry.biz. “One of our objectives in crafting Elements has been evolving the ease of use and raising the quality level of this genre on mobile. Our past experience building these types of games combined with the amazing advancement in mobile technology has allowed us to build a visually stunning game that is both accessible and deeply strategic.

“I had not planned to do another start-up, but conversations with Chaotic Moon and the pace of mobile gaming advancement got me super excited. This is about passion. We are truly making games that we want to play. And we believe our passion and enthusiasm will result in games that other gamers are going to love playing, too.”

Busey is no stranger to the CCG genre. He was the founder and CEO of social gaming developer Challenge Games, which had previously developed fantasy-themed CCG Duels for Facebook and another game of the same type, Warstorm for Facebook. Zynga acquired Austin-based Challenge Games back in January 2010 for an undisclosed sum of money. Busey and the studio’s 35 employees were the genesis of Zynga’s Austin studio. In October 2012, the Austin studio, which was the studio behind The Ville, saw staff cuts upward of more than 100 employees. Months later, Zynga closed its downtown Austin office, but the remaining employees were relocated to Zynga’s Dallas and North Austin offices.

Chaotic Moon Studios is known for developing apps for clients like Fox, Disney and Marvel. For example, the studio helped Marvel develop its most recent mobile release Marvel Unlimited, a comic subscription service.

Elements: Broken Lands, which features an in-game marketplace for players to buy and sell cards, launched yesterday for iOS, but there’s no mention for release on other platforms yet.

Glu Launches Frontline Commando: D-Day — Mobile game developer Glu Mobile celebrated 35 million downloads of Frontline Commando with the launch of a sequel, Frontline Commando: D-Day. The World War II third-person shooter is free to download from Google Play and the iTunes App Store. You can read our full review of the game here.

Square Enix launches Mini Ninja’s — Game developer Square Enix launched its Mini Ninjas game on iOS. Other games in the Mini Ninjas franchise were previously released on the Nintendo DS, Wii, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC. The iOS version is a runner game featuring the cartoon ninja characters and is priced at $0.99.

Into the Dead rises on Android — PikPok’s first-person zombie-themed endless runner game is now available to download for free on Google Play. You can read our full (and favorable) review of the previously released iOS version of the game game here.

Windows Store grows its game lineup — Microsoft has announced a list of new games that were released on the Windows Store during GDC or will be released in the upcoming weekend. New titles include PopCap’s Bejeweled, Glu’s Samurai vs. Zombies, Disney’s Temple Run Brave, GameHouse’s Emily’s Wonder Wedding and more.

Sega announces Puzzle Pirates for tablets – Game developer and publisher Sega announced that it will release developer Three Ring’s Puzzle Pirates on the iPad and Android tablets in the spring and summer of 2013. The tablet version of the game will feature full cross-platform play with the currently available versions of the game for PC, Linux and Mac.

PlayJam will begin shipping GameStick dev units next week – PlayJam, the creators of the Android-based games console GameStick, showed off the GameStick Storefront, running on a GameStick development unit at the Game Developers Conference this week, and also announced that developers can get their hands on the GameStick dev unit and free GameStick SDK starting next week. The GameStick will be launching with compatibility for 50 games in various genres, with titles like Riptide GP, Shadowgun and Smash Cops, as well as media apps like XBMC and Netflix. GameStick’s business model is revenue share-based, splitting revenues 70-30 from any in-app purchases or upfront premium price of an app. The GameStick plus a controller will run for $79, and $99 for the GameStick, controller and connectivity dock. Look for a full retail launch in a couple of months.

EA Mobile shows off upcoming mobile titles – Earlier this week at the Game Developers Conference, Inside Mobile Apps got their hands on three upcoming mobile titles from Electronics Arts, including TMi Trivia, Ultima Forever: Quest for the Avatar and Tetris Blitz. Trivia game TMi Trivia, which is set to launch in spring for iOS, features asynchronous multiplayer and trivia content that remains fresh, receiving new questions often from sources like Variety, Spin and a user’s own Facebook friends. Ultima Forever: Quest for the Avatar, a spiritual successor to Ultima 4, is a synchronous co-op RPG for iOS, featuring dungeon crawling and tons of loot collecting. We were told the game is “coming soon.” Puzzle game Tetris Blitz is a new Tetris game that adds a twist to the Tetris formula, altering gameplay into short rounds of Tetris in two-minute bursts, with usable power ups. Look for it in the spring.

Mega Run launching April 4 for Android – Canadian mobile game developer Get Set Games announced that it will launch auto-running platformer Mega Run for Android on April 4. The game, which first released for iOS, is packed with 80 levels across five worlds. Read our review for the iOS version here.

Mobile advertising network InMobi today announced the launch of App Publish, a free distribution platform that can publish an app to more than 130 Android app stores, with just a few clicks. This new product is a result of InMobi’s acquisition of mobile content management and distribution company Metaflow Solutions back in July 2012.

As Inside Mobile Apps readers and AppData users know from reading our weekly updated charts, Google Play is an important but also highly competitive platform, making discovery a challenge. Alternative channels like T Mobile, Mobango, Slide Me, and the many app stores based in territories like Korea and China can, cumulatively, drive billions of downloads. But different territories around the globe have different legal requirements, different platforms have different aesthetic and informational requirement, and managing these variables across many app stores can be quite a challenge.

InMobi’s App Publish platform offers to make this process much easier by allowing developers to launch and manage their apps on more than 130 app stores globally, all from a single dashboard.

“Once you’ve saturated Google Play, which is always the first stop for a developer, there’s a whole lot of other stores and many of the new guys aren’t aware of them,” InMobi director business development and former CEO of Metaflow Solutions Charles McLeod told us in an interview. “Maybe they know Amazon or Samsung, but there’s 200 other stores. We allow developers to get into these places that are just too costly, complex and time consuming. They get extra monetization, bigger reach, bigger communities.” Once the app is published, developers are also invited to use InMobi’s ad platform and its lifetime value platform InMobi LTVP.

If you’re publishing a free app, McLeod told us that, at least for the moment, the platform is completely free to use and doesn’t mandate any SDK. However, if you’re publishing a premium app, meaning it has a upfront purchase, InMobi takes a 20 percent cut of the net revenue. Over time, with some customers and large volume, that cost will decrease.

“You don’t have to signs 100 different contracts to get on these app stores,” vice president of marketing Shrikant G. Latkar told us. “We can give you that today. You can get 10 to 30 percent additional downloads for free, and it will take you 15 minutes on our website to sign up and submit. We even take care of translation.”

The translation is done via Microsoft translate, which McLeod admits is a quick and dirty way to do it, but it does the heavy lifting and is enough to get the app published. App Publish will also put developers in touch with vetted third parties that can help with more thorough localization, which has shown to greatly increase engagement.

InMobi has more than 800 employees, offices in 25 locations, a reach of more than 600 million unique users across the world, and deliver more than 100 billion ad impressions a month.