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Fishlabs and HandyGames in mobile games spat

Falling out over whether to sell through operators or not

Fishlabs and HandyGames in mobile games spat
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German mobile games publishers Fishlabs and HandyGames have fallen out over the latter's decison to stop selling its new mobile games on operator portals.

The knockabout spat shows the debate within the mobile games industry over how best to sell games, and the emerging problem of piracy.

It started on Monday, when Fishlabs announced its decision to abandon the operator portals in a blog post. "We will, for the time being, not develop any new Java mobile games for sale via network operators and Internet portals," it said.

Fishlabs's complaint was partly over the revenue share it gets from operators, as well as poor marketing and the lack of adequate copy protection for its games. "There are roughly ten times as many illegal downloads of our mobile games as legal," the post claimed.

However, yesterday HandyGames CEO Markus Kassulke (pictured) released an official statement slamming Fishlabs's comments and defending the operators.

"Without these market participants there would not be any market for mobile games at all - at least not in the shape we are facing right now," he said, before pointedly saying "to specialise, for example solely on 3D-games, in a mass market, which is actually influenced by a strong trend to casual games, can be lethal."

And today, Fishlabs boss Michael Schade responded to those comments, although he was careful not to directly attack HandyGames, saying "we are happy for anyone who is making good profit from operator channels these days".

However, he's sticking to his guns when it comes to the company's plans to spurn the operators. "We believe in the kind of games we do, and millions of (illegal) gamers worldwide do too," he said. "We are focusing on channels where quality and innovation is rewarded."

And our view? We think it's a shame the makers of great mobile games like Rally Master Pro and the Townsmen series have to fall out rather than put their heads together (with the operators) to help sort the industry's problems out.

Stuart Dredge
Stuart Dredge
Stuart is a freelance journalist and blogger who's been getting paid to write stuff since 1998. In that time, he's focused on topics ranging from Sega's Dreamcast console to robots. That's what you call versatility. (Or a short attention span.)