MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry
The BFI has released figures for the first full year of UK games tax relief, reporting a UK spend of 14m towards the production of approved titles. That’s just shy of the 15m that was budgeted for tax breaks between April 2014 and March 2015. Tax breaks for UK games …
Read More »Assassin’s Creed creator Désilets reveals new game Ancestors: the Humankind Odyssey
Ancestors: the Humankind Odyssey will be the first game to emerge from Patrice Dsilets’ studio Panache Digital. Our game is a third person action-adventure survival episodic game,” the studio has said. Through each episodes, we want the player to relive the greatest moments of mankind with a documentary twist. Our …
Read More »Mastertronic MD Andy Payne joins EGL board
Industry veteran Andy Payne has joined the board of eSports firm European Gaming League (EGL). Payne takes on the role on top of his duties as MD and chairman of publisher Mastertronic and chair of trade body UKIE. I am honoured and flattered to be asked to join EGL,” Payne …
Read More »Will anyone win the toys-to-life war?
It’s a little known fact that the term ‘toys-to-life’ is actually an Activision trademark. The publisher coined the phrase to describe its 2011 game and toy hybrid, Skylanders, and it has since been adopted by executives at Disney, Nintendo and Warner Bros. At that time, Activision hoped Skylanders would go …
Read More »Opinion: Pre-order? Why bother?
Is it really any surprise gamers are becoming more reluctant to pre-order? Over the past 12 months, there have been several examples of games that just didn’t live up to their expectations; games that launched full of bugs, and online games that couldn’t actually connect online. We can recall at …
Read More »ESPN to air live Heroes of the Storm finals this weekend in the US
eSports will take another big step this weekend when a competition final will be aired live on US cable TV. Blizzard has announced that the grand finals of its Heroes of the Dorm MOBA tournament will be screened by ESPN2 on Sunday night (April 26th). The channel will show the …
Read More »Indie GamesNation details South West store expansion plans
Indie retailer GamesNation wants to open three new stores this year. GamesNation opened its first outlet in Paignton in 2014, and is now eyeing up locations in Torquay, Exeter and Plymouth. We’ve been open a little over a year and it’s surpassed all of my expectations,” store owner Joe Marshall …
Read More »EA ‘still believes’ in free-to-play, despite shutting down four games
EA has backed the free-to-play business model, despite revealing plans to shut down four of its biggest freemium games. The titles – Battlefield Heroes, Battlefield Play4Free, Need For Speed World and FIFA World – will go offline on July 14th. EA Studios boss Patrick Sderlund told fans that the games …
Read More »MCV’s games industry five-a-side returns next month
Developers take on publishers, retailers, journalists and more on Thursday, May 21st
Read More »Middle Eastern eSports league launches
European eSports organisation EGL has announced plans to launch in the Gulf and MENA regions. The Middle East Gaming League (MEGL) arm of the group will be established in collaboration with local distributor Red Stallion Interactive. MEGL will cater to all 18 countries in the Middle Eastern market in a …
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