Game industry business news

The follow-up to Dead Island will not make it to Germany, revealed the game’s creative producer. Techland’s Sebastian Reichert revealed Dead Island: Riptide will skip the major European games market during an interview with PCGamesN. "We have no censored version of the game so we cannot release it in Germany.” …

Zynga will no longer be tied so closely to Facebook as a new deal between the two will level the playing field between the FarmVille firm and its competitors. The giant of social games was once the single biggest earner for the world’s largest social network, responsible for as much …

A new pay-what-you-want charity bundle of popular THQ games is now available. Consumers can pay anything from $1 for seven titles with proceeds going to charities Child’s Play and the American Red Cross. The Humble THQ Bundle allows gamers to pay for Steam keys to Darksiders, Metro 2033, Red Faction: …

PC owners are now able to purchase credit for leading downloads store Steam in branches of GAME. The specialist is the first UK retailer to sell Steam Wallet codes from Valve, which enable users to buy games and DLC through Steam. Customers will be able to buy codes worth 5, …

Next-gen Xbox likely to launch in time for Christmas, claim sources close to the matter

Microsoft will have its Xbox successor on the market before Thanksgiving and Christmas 2013. That’s according to a new report on Bloomberg, citing sources close to the matter who have conveniently started to blab just as the Wii U rolls out around the world. (It launched last night in the …

Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing Transformed will arrive in India early next week, well after the game’s international release. The good news, however, is that the multi-starring kart racer will be priced at just Rs 1,999 on Xbox 360 and PS3. Distributor E-xpress Interactive has confirmed, however, that the PC …

Well, we’re all a good few hours into playing our Wii U’s now, and sales charts for Q3 this year have come in. The Wii U midnight launches took place in hundreds of JB Hi-Fi, EB Games and K Mart stores across both countries yesterday, but EB in Sydney, Melbourne …

THQ has fallen on hard times lately and the cash-strapped publisher has now put together a Humble Bundle, offering a collection of its top games and leaving it up to the buyer to decide how much they want to pay for it. We’re used to seeing Humble Indie Bundles, which …

Online games portal Kongregate has introduced downloadable free-to-play games to its catalogue. The GameStop property says it will help developers with monetization and promotion, as well as providing visibility for titles. "This is a huge evolution forward for Kongregate, our gamers, and game developers,” said Kongregate CEO Jim Greer. We …