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

Activision, publishers of the perennial Call of Duty franchise, today announced they are forming a standardised global league for eSports competition. The news comes ahead of Black Ops III’s November 6 launch, and details eSports-friendly features to be included in the upcoming title, such as spectator mode ‘CODcasting’ and built-in …

If you visited MCV Towers at all this summer, there’s a good chance you would have heard the words ‘Rocket’ and ‘League’ echo around the floors. We’ve loved the car-football title here, and the fact it has been played by 6m people suggests that we’re not the only ones. That …

Tenth anniversary edition of ranking will name the world’s best game studios

'What you’ve achieved as UKIE’s chair has been outstanding and can’t ever be over-estimated,' says Jo Twist

Since 2004, Andy Payne has been leading the UK games industry at its trade body, UKIE. After more than a decade in the role, he is stepping down as UKIE’s chairman. Here members of the games industry –from investors to PRs, from publishing execs to members of the trade body …

All game development halted as 15 staff are laid off

Another major European gaming expo will take place next year – this time based in Turkey. Gaming Istanbul will be organised by GL Events and takes place at the Istanbul Congress Centre between February 4th and 7th. It is designed to cater for 100,000 visitors, both trade and consumer, and …

Turner Broadcasting is launching a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive eSports league in partnership with WME | IMG talent agency. The league, to be televised over two 10-week seasons per year on Time-Warner-owned American channel TBS, is set to begin in 2016. TBS currently hosts live Major League Baseball coverage and other …

Cities Skylines wins Golden Cube as Squad picks up two prizes for Kerbal Space Program

Ex-Sony, Outplay and Ripstone staff are heading up a new games publishing arm by Channel 4 called All 4 Games. The Glasgos-based publisher will be led by the media organisation’s games commission editor Colin Macdonald. The team includes Outplay’s Tone Brennan as executive producer, Sony’s Neil McPhillips as producer and …