MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry

NC (formerly NCSOFT) has announced that it will transition the global publishing service of Throne and Liberty from Amazon Game Studios to its own online publishing services this year.

G2, one of the world’s leading esports and entertainment brands, today announced Wizards of the Coast, the publisher behind iconic franchises including Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons, as its new global partner on G2's Counter-Strike jersey. Marking the start of a long-term creative collaboration, the partnership will bring different games from Wizards of the Coast's portfolio to one of esports' most recognisable jerseys.

Amazon Games and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment have announced Batman: Caped Crusader — Chronicles, a brand-new interactive experience developed in collaboration with Blazing Griffin, the Glasgow-based independent studio behind detective and mystery games Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot and Maurice Leblanc's Arsène Lupin. The game launches exclusively on Amazon Luna — Amazon's cloud gaming service — as part of its GameNight collection on 31st July 2026, the same day Season 2 of Batman: Caped Crusader premieres globally on Prime Video.

Research by distribution platform Playgama shows the number of HTML5 games released in the first half of 2025 had almost tripled year-on-year to 15,000. That's also 4.9 times the number that launched in H1 2023. Fellow distribution service Poki reports that it is seeing 100m monthly active users in 2026, up an order of magnitude since 2020's 10m.

Frontier Developments has announced the appointment of Dan Lazarides as Chief Marketing Officer. Dan will join the studio’s Executive Board and lead Frontier’s publishing and commercial teams across all current and upcoming projects, reinforcing Frontier’s player-first approach.

Redefining the Future of AA: Rebuilding Gaming's Missing Middle at ProbablyMonsters By David Reid, Chief Marketing Officer, ProbablyMonsters

Into Games, the UK charity widening access to games careers, has published a new evaluation of Boost, its paid work placement programme, showing that 88% of participants went on to full-time, part-time, or major freelance work in the industry after their placements ended. The charity is now raising £25,000 to fund at least 10 further placements for its 2026 cohort.

Marking 10 years of providing indie game developers and publishers with key marketing and creative support, Game If You Are is today celebrating with a fresh brand overhaul and a new initiative intended to provide indies with a low cost way to promote their games in the current market.

The New Guys, a new audience-risk and narrative-reception consultancy for the video game industry, has announced its launch at TheNewGuys.gg.

The entertainment industry’s leading full-service creative agency, Fluid, welcomes Stacey Bates-McCue to its Board of Directors. Stacey joins the Board after a decade at the agency, where she oversaw the creation and exponential success of the Licensing division.