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

The games industry sometimes works in mysterious ways. When Stardew Valley launched on February 26th, who would have guessed that the indie farming simulation title would end up in Steam’s Top 10 games the following week, out-selling pre-orders for The Division? The game has amassed a devoted community, which might …

French developer launches Kickstarter for Fear Effect Sedna after Collective sign-off

Publisher Square Enix says its next Final Fantasy game is the biggest production in the series’ history. And the firm hopes last week’s major Uncovered event will ignite the brand, as it looks to re-establish itself as an RPG powerhouse. The Final Fantasy series has endured a difficult few years, …

Entire issue dedicated to games on smart devices, available in print and digital

Gamer Network boss Rupert Loman says he’s disappointed by GAME’s decision to go head-to-head with his EGX event. GAMEFest will form part of Insomnia58, which starts on August 26th at Birmingham NEC. That’s just four weeks before EGX, which will take place at the same venue from September 22nd. On …

Video series Ordinary Women has been successfully crowdfunded on Seed&Spark. The Feminist Frequency production entered its final six-hour stretch some $20k short of its $200k goal. However, during a live stream featuring critic Anita Sarkeesian and broadcast from Double Fine Productions, the project hit its target. Four episodes of the …

Her Story creator Sam Barlow and The Chinese Room take home three gongs each

Indie skating games OlliOlli and OlliOlli 2 will be available to physical retail this summer. Developer Roll7 has teamed up with publisher Badland Games UK to release the two skating titles physically for PlayStation 4. OlliOlli launched digitally in January 2014, and to date has been downloaded 750,000 times. Its …

The creator of Stardew Valley says he is talking to other developers about releasing his hit farming simulation title on consoles. The smash hit PC game has been downloaded 830,000 times on Steam since its February 26th release. I’m currently in discussion with several companies that are interested in helping …

The UK games development sector is stronger than ever, despite the collapse of three major studios, say leading experts. Over the past month, Xbox has announced it will close Fable makers Lionhead (pictured), Sony will shut DriveClub creators Evolution, while Activision has announced redundancies at Guitar Hero developers FreeStyleGames. I …