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

King producer Andreas Olofsson tells us how his team mixes up the match three mechanic with each new release

The first full year of tax relief for games makers has seen more than 200 approved titles, with almost half passing final certification. The BFI hasannouncedthat 237 games were approved for Video Games Tax Relief in 2015, which marked the first full year of the legislation since passing in April …

£729m spent by eligible devs during first full year of financial support

Aside from the time it takes, the biggest pain from transcribing an interview is spotting the points you failed to jump on at the time and the jokes you missed and didn’t laugh at. In this instance, I‘m annoyed that I didn’t catch Mike Bithell’s ‘non-fascistic purity’ joke and didn’t …

This year’s Salary Survey highlights how little has changed in games industry pay packets – despite a rise in the number of independent businesses. 29,000 was this year’s UK average salary, which is the exact same number as last year, and broadly in line with the previous two (2014: 30,400 …

A shock announcement from November 2015 was that Activision Blizzard is to acquire mobile company King.com. And even more eye-opening was that the Call of Duty publisher is spending $5.9bn to buy the Candy Crush maker. Just to put that into perspective: Disney purchased the Star Wars franchise from LucasFilm …

Daniel Dawkins has been named the global editor in chief of Gamesradar+. Dawkins was previously the games group editor in chief for the UK. He replaces Sophia Tong, who has taken a new role at Future. She is working on ‘creative brand strategy and business development’ within the global revenue …

Nintendo has for the first time admitted that it may abandon Satoru Iwata’s Quality of Life roadmap. Kotaku reports on a Asahi story revealing that Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima has told investors: It’s not yet at the level of a Nintendo product. If we can release it, we’ll release it. …

CEO Derrick Morton debates the merits of prioritising smart devices over other platforms

In this week’s issue, we unveil the results of our annual Salary Survey. This year over 1,000 people took part – including more than 650 from the UK – making it our most successful salary survey yet. The survey shows that UK games workers earn an average of 29.000 across …