PocketGamer.biz Week That Was: King gives up on Candy(TM), Rovio unveils new publishing program, and MagicSolver 'moves on'

The Chinese Zodiac contends that we’re sitting in the year of the horse, but if you've an eye for mobile you'd be right to think we're in the year of Candy.

While the success of King's Candy Crush Saga is impressive in every sense of the word, no less impressive is the amount of opinions it engendered with its decision to trademark the word 'Candy' and go on a legal campaign to protect its IP.

Thankfully, like so much Flappy Bird, 'Candygate' now appears to be behind us and we can turn our attention back to the finer points of the mobile scene - and what better way to start than with a look back at the PocketGamer.biz week that was?

• Rovio announced a new third-party publishing venture aimed at promoting educational games for kids.
• And Samsung took the stage at MWC to explain its S Console, GamePad, and push for multi-screen games.
• Think Gaming announced its new - and free - Scouting Reports, which look to hook promising F2P games up with interested investors.
• And Nokia announced its intentions to broaden its approach and focus on the low-end with Android fork Nokia X.
• Pocket Gems unveiled its new game, Episode, an experimental F2P platform for user-generated content.

• After initial rumours surfaced, King confirmed that it's 'withdrawn its trademark application' for the word Candy in the US.
• And the European Commission invited Apple and Google to talk about the 'misleading' label of free-to-play games.
• Surveying 1,000 US gamers, PlayPhone found women between 40 and 64 played the most games - but the majority of spenders were between 30 and 39.
• Our Charticle this week examined the performance of the beautiful Tengami, and its quest to conquer the App Store with its $4.99 pricetag.
• While our Chart of the Week came from Swrve, which showed that half of in-game revenue was generated by just 0.15 percent of players.
• And our Monetizer compared the revenue of three F2P games with 7-band IAP economies.
• Finally, an investor issued a call for Nintendo to embrace mobile games and consider a F2P approach.

• GameOn unveiled a €10 million development fund, but Vlambeer's Rami Ismail was worried about the sort of message it was sending to the industry.
• Demiurge CEO Albert Reed talked about how his team – known for its work on Borderlands and BioShock - is looking to make a name for itself in mobile.
• Pocket Gamer's Peter Willington took time away from MWC to wonder why more mobile devs aren't strapping on wearables - and he also gave 7 easy tips to master conference etiquette.
• Ever prolific, Peter also shared 3 big trends in gaming that he learned from MWC.
• 99Games' Shilpa Bhat gave some insight into how Dhoom:3 became the first game to hit 1 million downloads on the Indian Windows Phone store.
• After three years of development, Alan Miranda gave us a candid look at the making of The Shadow Sun.
• And Carter Dotson from 148Apps shared a few points that mobile and console developers can learn from each other.
  

• Following AppShopper and App Gratis, app recommendation shop MagicSolver got hit by Apple's clause 2.25 and looked like it was going to shut its doors for good.
• ...but it later denied claims that it was shuttering, saying instead that it's 'moving on' instead.
• Remode Studios, meanwhile, announced that it's closing its doors in March while its founders will focus on new IPs.
• On the happy side, InnoGames announced that it's hiring for 100 new positions to help fill out its new Hamburg office space.
• Also, Aeria Games sold off its PC business, rebranded, and switched its focus entirely to mobile.

• SupersonicAds reckons that the majority of its growth in video advertising came from mobile.
• Hoping that it's turned a corner, Chinese online and mobile outfit KongZhong reported its Q4 mobile sales were up 18 percent to $5 million.
• G5 Games, meanwhile, saw its FY13 sales up 24 percent to $15.6 million.