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

Blizzard’s recent decision to block accounts deemed to have been using Hearthstone bots has forced one company to close its doors. Those visiting the Crawlerbots website, who make Hearthstone bot Hearthcrawler and World of Warcraft bot Warcrawler, are now greeted with the following message: This is our last official announcement. …

PS4 and Xbox One consoles are flying off shelves, but the games are not following them. UK boxed games sales this week reached just 13.6m, a figure more suited to July, not the middle of October (GfK Chart-Track figures). For the month of October, UK boxed game sales hit 78m, …

The most bankable game studios in the world today, measured by retail sales data

71,582,030 minutes – that’s the length of an online ban being sent out to some players of Super Smash Bros on 3DS. A handful of Reddit users have received the – presumably erroneous – ban as punishment for what the platform holder has deemed to be overtly aggressive targeting of …

Sony's console enjoys best quarter since launch

Jenny Richards-Stewart has been named as the new CEO of Women in Games Jobs. Richards-Stewart has previously worked as CEO at the Gremlin Group and the chair of the board of governors at GamesAid. She also spent six years at the Paddington Academy. She said she fully supported the organisation’s …

Develop asks the leading studios why working on existing IP can be good for business and creativity

Nintendo boss Satoru Iwata has indicated that Nintendo could be willing to reverse its long-term opposition to region locking. The game business has a history of taking a very long time with localization,” he told investors, as per a NeoGaf translation. [This is due to] among other things – having …

New chief exec keen to promote equality in sector

New hire takes up position left vacant by Andrew Sheppard