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

Red Kite Games is launching a free game called Firefly Runner tomorrow (June 5th) for iOS, Android and Kindle Fire. While it will be free, the game is ad-supported. One in-app purchase of 69p will turn the ads off. 15 per cent of money made from the mobile title will …

Free license introduced to cross-platform toolset, new platforms added for subscribers

Xbox One users will soon be able to upload video clips to Vine. It’s the first time the short-form video service has been adapted for a TV platform. The console’s Vine app will be able to both upload clips (via the Upload Studio) and view other Vine videos. In total …

YouTubers who have uploaded footage of Mario Kart 8 are are seeing their videos flagged up by Google. The claims are for user gameplay footage, GoNintendo reports. Video uploaded via Mario Kart TV is automatically part of Nintendo’s video advertising program. This suggests Nintendo has made a claim on the …

Trion Worlds MMO Defiance has made the inevitable free-to-play move on PC. The studio has made the move ahead of the premire of the associated TV series’ second series on SyFy in July. Trion says that it intends for the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of the game to go …

Zynga’s senior VP of mobile Travis Boatman, head of acquisitions Terence Fung and studio president Steve Chiang have all left the company. As reported byVenturebeat, the departures mark a complete shake-up of the management team since theappointment of Don Mattrick as CEOnearly a year ago. Fung has now joined mobile …

Nintendo has released a DS game on the Wii U Virtual Console for the first time. Eurogamer reports that Brain Training is now available to Japanese Wii U owners who have updated their console to the latest firmware. It’s free, too, until June 30th. The two screens of the DS …

Mario Kart 8 has topped the weekly Japanese charts and boosted sales of the hardware in Nintendo’s home country. It may not have sent Wii U sales rocketing 666 per cent as it did in the UK, but the game’s arrival did double weekly Wii U sales to over 19k …

New numbers suggest the boom in eSports is showing no sign of abating. Gamasutra reports that IHS Technology data suggests 2.4bn hours of eSports were viewed throughout 2013. That’s nearly double the 1.3bn watched in 2012. Furthermore, it estimates that this will have climbed to 6.6bn hours by 2018, by …

Nine years on from Nintendogs, Sony has today finally entered the handheld virtual space. PlayStation Vita Pets, from Liverpool studio Spiral House, will later today be available to download now on PSN for €29.99 (UK price TBC). It will arrive at retail on Friday. Players can take control of one …