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

You don’t need us to tell you that in 2016, streaming is kind of a big deal in certain circles. But did you know that the amount of people watching Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is equal to more than 10% of the people actually playing it? We’re talking upwards of 60,000 …

On April 2, more than 10,000 people took their seats in Columbus, Ohio’s Nationwide Arena to watch the Major League Gaming Counter-Strike: Global Offensive final match between European powerhouse Natus Vincere and Brazilian upstart Luminosity. Those fans were soon out of their seats, yelling and cheering at the unfolding drama. …

Blizzard has suffered an attack on its servers that halted access to many of its games. Hacking group Lizard Squad has claimed credit for the attacks on social media, pre-empting the downtime with a Get Ready” message. It has also warned that further attacks are on the way, although Blizzard’s …

Tournament organiser WSVG have yet to pay out $32,000 in prize money. The company, which held an event in the Maldives in October 2015, offered up an initial $50,000 prize pool to be split across Hearthstone, Starcraft II and FIFA tournaments, however most of this has not been received by …

It seems as if Oculus Rift exclusives are exclusive only in name. Polygon reports that a third party program released on Github allows any Oculus Rift title to be played on the HTC Vive headset. The first release allows titles such as Lucky’s Tale and Dreamdeck to happily run on …

LibreVR plug-in ‘reimplements functions from the Oculus runtime and translates them to OpenVR calls’

Gamescom organiser Koelnmessehas opened press accreditation for this year’s show. This will be open online until two weeks before the event starts on Wednesday, August 17th. More information can be found here. Signing up as a member of the press grants you a press ticket for the Cologne trade show, …

Lost in Babel tops 36-hour competition entered by 20 educational institutions

Blackbird Interactive went from developing a spiritual successor to Homeworld to helming the first new entry in the sci-fi strategy series in more than decade. Lead programmer Yossarian King reveals the transformative power held by the licence

The links between games violence and real-world violence are dubious, but a new study has suggested a worrying new corroboration between some games and social attitudes. An Ohio State University study has found that young male gamers who identify with characters in violent games that objectify women show less empathy …