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

European players of Blizzard’s card game Hearthstone have been offered a sweetener to apologise for recent disruptions to the service. Many players on the EU servers encountered trouble at the end of last month, coinciding with the climax of Season 13 and the release of the final set of single …

Ubisoft will make good on its promise to deliver gender diversity in its upcoming titles by allowing players of the next Assassin’s Creed to assume the role of a women. That’s according to Kotaku, which says that Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate – which is supposedly the new name for the game …

Castlevania developer Koji Igarashi went to Kickstarter less than 24 hours ago looking for $500,000 to fund his new title, the campaign currently has over $1m pledged with no sign of slowing. At time of publication, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night has garnered more than 15,000 backers – meaning the …

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has amassed more than 1m pre-orders ahead of its launch later this month, developer CD Projekt Red has announced. The milestone was reached across PC, PS4 and Xbox One platforms. CD Projekt Red didn’t provide a breakdown for how much each platform has sold, though …

Grand Theft Auto V has again finished on top of Steam’s weekly top selling products, while The Witcher franchise made a big splash as well. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive took the runner-up spot ahead of pre-orders of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, with Project Cars and the new Stars Wars Collection …

Nintendo remains adamant that it will not be announcing any news about the in-development NX console at E3 next month. The message is no different to that given by boss Satoru Iwata when the machine was first announced, when he said that we shouldn’t expect any more information until 2016. …

The evidence of a potential Fallout 4 unveiling at E3 2015 next month is growing. Videogamer reports that an online CV dug up on LinkedIn suggests that Guillermo del Toro’s production company Mirada Studios has been making a cinematic trailer for Bethesda’s still unannounced title. The artist in question worked …

Industry veteran Sam Forrest has joined indie publisher Team 17 as its PR director. Forrest has held a number of PR roles over his 20-year career in the games industry. At RuneScape company Jagex he was VP of communications, and before that he spent nine years at THQ in a …

Ubisoft Annecy is the latest studio to collaborate on the publisher’s upcoming open-world shooter Tom Clancy’s The Division. The developer has previously worked on the multiplayer for Assassin’s Creed III and Black Flag. It now joins Massive Entertainment, Reflections and Red Storm in making The Division. Annecy’s exact role on …

In October 2013, an experimental game from a developer called Galactic Caf emerged on Steam. It was The Stanley Parable – a fullly fleshed-out version of a Source Engine mod of the same name. The title was developed by two-man team Davey Wreden and William Pugh. But Pugh wasn’t always …