Game industry business news

Senior Microsoft director was given red light on 'crazy' project

RuneScape development studio and publisher Jagex has appointed two new staff to senior positions. Daniel Clough has now joined the team as chief operating officer, while Wendy Rosenthal has been appointed as the new chief marketing officer. Daniel and Wendy bring a huge weight of experience to Jagex’s leadership team,” …

One of the creative directors working on Halo 4 has quit not just the game but also developer 343 Industries. Ryan Payton, who Kotaku reports has been previously diagnosed with depression, says that despite a great run at Microsoft” that he doesn’t regret, there came a point where I wasn’t …

Codes for an estimated three million copies of Codemasters racer Dirt 3 have been accessed and illegally distributed online. Kotaku reports that a promotion from graphics card manufacturer AMD was offering free copies of the game to anyone who purchased one of their graphics cards. However, the 3m Steam codes …

In celebration of the series’ 15th anniversary, Sony has offered free access to three classic Resident Evil titles for members of its PlayStation Plus service in the US. For the next two weeks users will be able to play PSOne trio Resident Evil Director’s Cut, Resident Evil 2 and Resident …

A number of websites have been hacked and defaced by a Turkish hacking group TurkGuvenligi, describing the 4th of September as ‘World Hackers Day’. Araft of domainsappear to have been defaced by TurkguvenLigi including major British IT news web site The Register, the newspaper the Telegraph, Vodafone, UPS and BetFair. …

Two of the world’s most influential PC games studios want Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft to break down the barricades to their consoles’ online services. Gabe Newell and Frank Pearce, the co-founders of Valve Software and Blizzard Entertainment, both believe that online unification between consoles would be a progressive step for …

New COO and CMO assume roles at RuneScape developer

The Australian Law Reform Commission is calling for volunteers to view current media content and focus group the upcoming changes to the classification system. The plan is for 2 groups of 15 adults to serve as a pilot project, determining the usefulness of public consultations for future assessment panels. Applicants …

Australia and New Zealand now have the ability to earn Microsoft points for their activities on XBox LIVE, including renewing subscriptions and making online purchases. The scheme launched in the UK and US earlier this year, and is available only to a select few territories. It gives readers Microsoft points …