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

Blizzard has detailed the next big expansion on the way to its World of Warcraft themed card battler Hearthstone. It’s called The Grand Tournament and will feature 132 new cards. The main new mechanic to be introduced sees tweaks and alterations to how players use their Hero power. Some cards …

VR creators don’t expect to change the world overnight, says the head of Sony’s London studio. David Ranyard, who is currently building games for PlayStation’s Morpheus headset, likens the VR shift to when silent movies were replaced by ‘talkies’ – which took several years to take place. VR is such …

40 games given final certification in the first half of the year, with another 49 games receiving interim certification

Next week could see another big player join the ever-intensifying virtual reality fray. Former mobile manufacturer Nokia is set to take the wraps off its very own VR product at a big reveal event in LA, according to sources ‘familiar with the company’s plans’ talking to Recode. The company sold …

Ad-blockers charging websites to have their advertising ‘unblocked’ is not illegal. Two leading legal firms say that although ad-blocker’s practices are dubious, it’s currently allowed under law. AdBlock Plus andits‘white list’ business model was recently held by the German courts tobe perfectly legal. It seems likely thata court here in …

VR headsets could go the way of defunct game streaming services like OnLive. That’s the warning from Network’s Neil Young, a senior games industry veteran and founder of mobile games publisher Ngmoco. Young predicts that VR headsets will become a popular item, but not for another ‘three to five’ years, …

The company formerly known as Sony Online Entertainment is getting a new boss. VentureBeat reports that John Smedley is leaving his position at the H1Z1 and Everquest developer, with current COO Russell Shanks to take on the role. It appears that he intends to stay with the company. I can …

Nintendo has emerged victorious after a company claimed that the platform holder’s handheld consoles infringed on its patent. The Quintal Research Group nailed down a patent in 2008 for a ‘computerized information retrieval system’. Such a system, the patent proposes, is described as having a generally rectangular shape, with a …

COO Russell Shanks to take over as Smedley takes time off in the wake of cyberattacks

John Broomhall talks with Limbo’s audio creator Martin Stig Andersen