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

The total prize pool for Hi-Rez Studios’ Smite World Championships has been capped at $1m, according to President Stewart Chisam. The $1m limitation is less than half of the total from this year’s SWC – which awarded $2.6m in prize money to eight top teams in January – and also …

Sony’s updated PS4 design is quieter than the existing model and generates less heat. That’s according to Eurogamer, which has examined the findings of a Pocket News report. The PS4 redesign was quietly revealed by at FCC filing last month. Although on the surface it looks much the same as …

Grace Kim and Cherylynn Lima receive $5,000 for educational expenses and get ten-week internship at studio

Ahead of the release of Might No. 9 in September, Keiji Inafune has taken to Kickstarter with another Mega Man successor. Red Ash: The Indelible Legend is described as an open-world game with third-person shooter elements. Many of its developers previously worked on cancelled 3DS game Mega Man: Legends. So …

Hell yeah – the Texas Rattlesnake himself will grace the cover of this year’s WWE game. One of the biggest wrestlers of the infamous ‘Attitude Era’, Stone Cold Steve Austin replaces relative newcomer and WWE 2K15 box star John Cena, whose "You can’t see me" catchprase takes on new meaning …

Interim CEO Ellen Pao has said that change is on the way following Reddit’s return to normal following last week’s mod protest. A number of the site’s subreddits were last week locked down after the mod in charge of the site’s popular AMAs, named Victoria, was allegedly fired. The bigger …

The hostile reaction toward the graphical downgrade experienced by Watchdogs between its unveiling and release led to a change of policy at Ubisoft. The game was upon its release last year widely criticised for failing to live up to the visual promises made in some of its pre-release material. Now …

Revenues for YouTube personality increase sharply

Weekly music magazine NME is to become free in September, with video games joining a number of new topics being introduced to its pages. The switch will see 300k copies of the magazine handed out at stations, universities and retailers each week. The magazine’s circulation fro the latter half of …

Development branch aims to hire up to 30 new staff this year