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

Star Wars: The Old Republic has seen an increase of 2m new accounts since switching to the free-to-play model last November. In a State of the Game blog post, executive producer Jeff Hickman announced the figure – adding that the game’s high capacity servers are teeming with people,” thanks to …

Kickstarter pledges have totaled over $22m thus far in 2013, with $107.6m pledged lifetime to games alone on the crowdfunding site. A Kickstarter blog post reports that since the service started in 2009, 1,476 new games have been successfully funded by over 633k backers. More than 4,500 game-related projects have …

Metro: Last Light producer Huw Beynon has written a verbal check he fully expects 4A Games’ shooter to cash. I firmly believe that the PC version of Metro: Last Light is one of, if not the best looking game you can actually buy, period, at the moment,” Beynon told Eurogamer. …

The second act in the StarCraft II trilogy sold around 1.1m copies worldwide in its first two days of availability, Blizzard has announced. Heart of the Swarm’s good start lags a bit behind StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty, which sold 1.5m in its first 48 hours following its launch in …

More than a million fans also tune in to Major League Gaming eSports tournament

Giordano Contestabile takes on role as VP of product management and revenue at creative agency

Paul Abbott joins senior management team at new UK developer

Middleware outfit supporting 'make a game on a plane' development contest

Creative agency Tilting Point has named former PopCap man Giordano Bruno Contestabile as its new VP of product management and revenue. The move brings an end to the exec’s five-year stint at the EA-owned casual games studio, where he most recently served as executive producer to the Bejeweled franchise. Before …

Careen Yapp to focus on acquisition of new partners