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

Activision’s social network for Call of Duty is to be canned. The stat tracking service was introduced with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Call of Duty: Black Ops II. However, it received little use in new release Ghosts, which instead favoured the new Clan Wars system. The publisher …

14.3 million PC copies of the runaway brick-builder have been paid-for

Publisher says layoffs at God of War-originator are part of a ‘resource re-alignment’

The proposed merger between Dixons and Carphone Warehouse could face an investigation from the UK competition commission. Yesterday the shock move was proposed between the two managements that could see Carphone Warehouse crack the electronics sector, and Dixons Retail finally grab a foothold in the smartphone market. The new business …

God of War developer Sony Santa Monica has been hit with a round of layoffs, Sony Computer Entertainment of America has confirmed. The publisher told IGN a reduction in workforce took place yesterday at the SoCal-based development studio, stating the cuts are the result of resource re-alignment. "SCEA can confirm …

A new PlayStation 3 bundle featuring Lego The Hobbit is heading stateside this spring, Sony has announced. Detailed on the US PlayStation Blog, the bundle will pack a 500 GB PS3 and a copy of the upcoming Lego title covering Peter Jackson’s first two films in The Hobbit trilogy for …

Candy Crush Saga studio King has withdrawn its attempt to trademark the world candy” in the US. Kotaku originally spotted the reversal, with King later clarifying that it pulled the trademark application after it successfully acquired the preliminary rights to the phrase candy crusher.” "King has withdrawn its trademark application …

Namco Bandai invaded Sega’s HQ this week in an effort to promote Pac-Man. The character is set to make a comeback this year with Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures. And so the firm decided to project an image the titular character onto Sega’s headquarters in Chiswick, West London. It’s because …

At New York Toy Fair, Cryptozoic Entertainment revealed the first look at its upcoming board game based on the Portal video game series. Tentatively titled Portal: Uncooperative Cake Aquisition Game, the board game has been designed by the creators of Portal and Portal 2. Set to arrive at retail Q3 …

Famed UK developer Peter Molyneux has admitted that 2010 RPG Fable III fell well short of his expectations. I think Fable III was a trainwreck,” the former Lionhead boss told Develop. It was built to be much bigger than what it was constrained to be and eventually ended up as. …