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

Developer Niantic has delved deeper into the reasons behind its decision to put a block on third party Pokemon tracking sites. The shutdown came into effect earlier in the week, with Niantic previously claiming that such services were interfering with our ability to maintain quality of service for our users”. …

Blizzard will host the first ever Overwatch World Cup at Blizzcon, where the best players in the world will play for their home nation in a battle for national pride. The exhibition tournament will see players come together to form national teams and compete in online qualifiers, with the top …

Microsoft’s Xbox One S officially arrived in the UK this week, but tracking one down can currently be quite a challenge. The 2TB version is out of stock at the likes of Amazon, GAME, ShopTo and GameStop. And as a result prices on sites like eBay have rocketed. The machine …

Owlchemy Labs, the developer behind early VR hit Job Simulator, has raised $5 in Series A investment funding. Among the studio’s backers are Vive maker HTC and virtual reality organisation The VR Fund, as well as Colopl Next, Capital Factory and other tech investors. Owlchemysaidit would use the money to …

CS:GO world champions SK Gaming will be without Fernando “fer” Alvarenga until mid September at the earliest due to the player requiring two surgeries. Alvarenga requires surgery on both his nose, to enable him to breath through both nostrils, and on his ear to prevent further hearing loss. Unfortunately both …

Putting out a fighting game as an Xbox One exclusive in the current market climate – i.e the one where you need a PlayStation to play Street Fighter on console – isn’t going to end particularly well for your game, and that’s exactly how Killer Instinct suffers. Read more on …

It almost seems like yesterday when SK Telecom T1 thwarted South Korean rival ROX Tigers to win the 2015 Summoner’s Cup and establish itself as the first true global dynasty in League of Legends. Don’t look now, but the summer regular season is wrapping up for all five of the …

The banes of competitive online gaming are many, but the handful of principal offenders are easy to identify. Trolls, cheaters, matchmaking hiccups – these persistent gremlins are all here to ruin your day, and no solutions are completely effective at eradicating them. Even Riot Games hasn’t found a cure-all for …

Over the past year, esports has exploded into the public eye. ESPN started a full-time wing dedicated to it and hosted Heroes of the Dorm on ESPN2. Turner Broadcasting produced a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) league. Big Four accounting firms like PricewaterhouseCoopers and Deloitte are even distributing reports on the …

The members of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) team, Virtus.pro, aren’t the only winners at the culmination of Turner and WME/IMG’s inaugural 10-week ELeague. Buffalo Wild Wings, one of the primary sponsors of the event, has committed to the first year of Turner eSports, including the upcoming $300,000 Overwatch Open with …