Game industry business news

Grand Theft Auto Vice City has been removed from Steam and other digital retailers. The only official comment on the matter comes from a Rockstar rep speaking on the Steam forums, who confirmed: Due to some music licensing issues, we’ve had to temporarily remove Vice City PC from digital stores. …

An interactive Pokemon encyclopaedia called Pokemon Zukan has been launched on the Japanese Apple App Store. It’s the second Pokemon-themed release on Apple’s portal following the arrival of Pokemon Say Tap last year. This new title, however, is the first paid-for Nintendo iOS app, though purists will argue that it’s …

Supermarkets have eclipsed specialists to become Britain’s No.1 games retailers. The likes of Asda, Tesco, Morrisons and Sainsbury’s have edged past GAME?and Amazon and made more money from games sales than any other retail sector, according to the latest data from Kantar Worldpanel seen by MCV. The supermarket chains continue …

The threat of worker unrest could cause havoc for Walmart’s Black Friday push next week. Quasi-union OUR Walmart is planning a number of strikes and protests aimed at disrupting the company’s operations during America’s busiest shopping weekend. The first action began yesterday, The Guardian reports, with at least” 30 workers …

A handful of tickets are left for next week’s LGC, with over 100 different firms already signed up to attend. You better have a good excuse why you aren’t one of them. 300 execs are attending – with over 100 representatives from different businesses in video games looking to grow …

The Human Rights Campaign has awarded publisher EA a 100 per cent rating in its LGBT workplace equality report. To receive the award businesses must demonstrate policies, benefits and practices that are best-in-class demonstrations of corporate commitments to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender employees”. Only companies that score 100 per …

After what can rightly be described as a mixed first year, EA and BioWare’s Star Wars: The Old Republic is now a free-to-play title. Throughout the game’s early life subscriber numbers hit a reasonable 1.7m, although within six months that number had fallen to 1.3m and as of July this …

You can sell all the consoles you want, but unless you can convince the people that own them to buy software you’re still screwed. So Nintendo will take great heart from the fact that it isn’t just the Wii U hardware that’s showing huge signs of popularity – the software’s …

Executive departs as company stock makes small rally

70m PlayStation 3 consoles have been shipped worldwide, says Sony. And as revealed by MCV last month, 5m has been sold in the UK. The platform hit the milestone as of November 4th, while as of November 11th over 15m units of Sony’s PlayStation Move accessory had also been sold …