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

A Californian man was arrested last week for sending death threats to Hearthstone, Overwatch and World of Warcraft firm Blizzard. The US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California has published a press release, explaining that 28-year old Stephen Cebula had sent messages to Blizzard at the beginning of …

The fans of EA’s FIFA series have spoken – Borussia Dortmund’sMarco Reus will be the face of this year’s entry in the franchise. The German player beat three other competitors in a fan vote to decide FIFA 17’s cover star – James Rodriguez ofReal Madrid C.F.,Anthony Martial of Manchester United, …

Developer Digital Extreme has revealed that its online shooter Warframe was the victim of a hack back in November 2014. The studio claims to have only just discovered the breach, which saw 775k user email leaked from an older version of the title’s content management system. Passwords, credit card details …

ESL will host the European Heroes of the Storm Fall Regional at gamescom in August. The competition will take place on the ESL main stage between August 17th and 19th. $100,000 is on the line, along with a spot at the Fall Championship that will be held at BlizzCon 2016. …

Cosmos Rings will send users notifications based on step counts and utilise ‘Time Upstream System’

Fnatic have finally entered the Overwatch scene, after much speculation, by signing a mostly American roster. The new team includes: Andr iddqd” Dahlstrm, Scott custa” Kennedy, Oliver Vonethil” Lager, Casey buds” McIlwaine, Warsi Faraaz Stoop” Waris, Matthew coolmatt69” Iorio and finally Robert Roflgator” Malecki, who will act as the team’s …

Crowdfunding platform admits drop in overall amount pledged, but highlights growth of smaller projects as ‘bright thread’

What went wrong for Niantic? How can other developers learn from their difficulties to prepare themselves in the future? Griff Parry, CEO and founder of GameSparks, explores what is going on

At long last Japanese players are finally able to download Pokemon Go. Whether they can play it is another question entirely, however. The app itself is available to download on the Japanese versions of both iOS and Google Play. If reports are to be believed it’s a couple of days …

Rendering engine reportedly able to trace in excess of 100 million rays per second while remaining suitable for use on mobile, VR and AR devices