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

News has emerged that Scottish games developer Stewart Hogarth has sadly passed away. Gamasutrareports that Stewart was fighting congenital heart disease right up until Tuesday, September 15th. He was just 34 years old. Stewart was known to much of the Scottish games community, having worked at firms such as Denki …

Fastest downloaded Ubisoft title on PlayStation ever

Sales of physical games in the UK generated just 22.5m last month, the lowest figure for an August since the mid-1990s. It is the 14th worst month in UK games industry history – 12 of which took place during 1996 and 1997. The only month in recent memory to reach …

Ex-Denki game designer loses battle to congenital heart disease

Ubisoft has said that Grow Home has become its fastest ever downloaded game on the PlayStation Network. Grow Home was initially released on Steam in February. A possible console release was touted should the PC release prove successful enough. This came to fruition last month when the game won the …

Konami says it is closing the gap between its PES series and EA’s football blockbuster, FIFA. Speaking to MCV, the publisher said it wants to be the industry leader in terms of soccer titles. Reviews for PES 2016 are now out, with critics praising the title. We’re definitely catching up …

Consumers who pre-order spend twice as much on games as the average player. Research firm Kantar Worldpanel says that consumers who pre-order spend – on average – 235 on games a year. The statistic acts as a warning to publishers following recent consumer dissatisfaction over pre-order issues. These have included …

Deep Silver has confirmed that Early Access MOBA Dead Island: Epidemic will be killed off next month. This means that those who paid 29.99 for the starter pack, which included a number of items to be delivered upon the game’s official launch, will never receive their goods. The publisher has …

Zavvi’s parent company The Hut Group has restructured its games and tech team, with key new recruits. Former senior buyer Mike Fethers will lead the new team as head of technology and games. He is joined by Martyn Plant, who has been appointed junior buyer. Plant has been part of …

The first publishers have added their support to MCV’s call for more digital download data. The Digital Counts campaign launched three weeks ago, calling on publishers and digital retailers to share their figures in-order to create an accurate games chart. Currently, only games sold in boxes are included in the …