Hot Five: Garena Free Fire snipes $4BN, Pokémon dev Game Freak’s first mobile exclusive, and Supercell’s next project imminent

• To help get you primed and ready for another week in mobile gaming, we’ve curated the biggest stories you need to know from the last seven days

Start your week right with our quick take on the stories that are impacting the mobile industry right now.

To help get you primed and ready for another week in mobile gaming, we’ve curated the biggest stories you need to know from the last seven days.

1) Garena Free Fire celebrates seventh anniversary with $4 billion in lifetime revenue

Garena Free Fire’s seventh-anniversary celebration comes as the game and its HD counterpart have reached a combined $4 billion in lifetime revenue, $3.4 billion of which comes from the original.

The celebratory event underway offers players four weeks of themed rewards, time-limited activities, and plenty of nostalgia. A number of "classic features" returned to Free Fire as the event kicked off, including a miniature version of Bermuda Peak called Mini Peak, and weapons from the game’s past.

2) Clash Heroes lives!… As new Supercell game Project R.I.S.E

Shortly after the release of Squad Busters, Supercell has created new Twitter and YouTube accounts to announce the imminent arrival of another new game called Project R.I.S.E. It takes its artstyle and certain assets from Clash Heroes, one of many ditched projects from Supercell, and is set in the same Clash universe, but "everything else was from scratch".

This includes the gameplay - Clash Heroes was strictly single player while Project R.I.S.E is a social action RPG roguelike, meaning it has been "built with multiplayer first".

3) "Games are a long-term bet for Netflix"

Engagement with games via Netflix is said to have tripled year-over-year in 2023, led by the likes of GTA and Football Manager, and the subscription service is looking ahead to a vision of games on all devices where Netflix is accessible, not just mobile.

"We’ve found that games based on Netflix series and films - Too Hot to Handle and games based on well-known franchises like GTA are most popular with our members, so we’re leaning more toward those categories," said Netflix VP of external games Leanne Loombe.

4) OV Entertainment Group acquires co-development studio Kokku and tech firm 3OGS

UK-based multimedia company and recently formed OV Entertainment Group has made two key hires in industry veterans Christopher Bergstresser and Oliver Kern, the former becoming CSO and the latter COO.

Meanwhile, OV Entertainment Group’s CEO has been named as Thiago de Freitas following the company’s acquisition of Kokku, where he was founder and chief executive. 3OGS has been acquired too, with even more strategic deals planned for this year.

5) Pokémon developer Game Freak’s first mobile exclusive is new IP, Pand Land

Pokémon developer Game Freak has released its first mobile-exclusive in "maritime adventure RPG" Pand Land. The title is currently a Japan-only game and was designed to be "like a console game, but an easy and simple game that can fit in one hand".

Pand Land is a new IP and was co-developed and published by fellow Japanese studio WonderPlanet, supporting Game Freak in this rare move from the Pokémon powerhouse. The game sees players team up with as many as 400 friends to search the high seas for treasure.