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

Voice chat will not be an out-of-the-box feature for Wii U, Nintendo has confirmed. That’s despite the fact that the high-tech Wii U GamePad actually houses a microphone. However, this will not be used as a default option for voice chat, Kotaku reports. Instead, users who wish to use the …

Square Enix has blocked access to its Official Merchandise store following a suspected hacker attack. The publisher says that its European customer details were not compromised – in fact it has not yet found evidence of any customer details being compromised. We have reason to believe that unknown parties have …

Future Publishing has named Clair Porteous as head of its Entertainment group. She replaces Simon Maxwell, who left to join Eurogamer in August. Porteous has been holding down the role on a interim basis since his departure. She will now take control of Future’s entire games and film portfolio. Prior …

InnoGames CMO Volker Dressel offers advice on successfully adapting to numerous platforms

The Borderlands franchise is headed to handhelds this month in the form of Borderlands Legends for iPhone and iPad. The announcement appeared as an ad in the Borderlands 2 digital strategy guide and was spotted by a member at the Gearbox forums. There is still no formal announcement of BorderlandsLegends …

Another major name has signed up to speak at next month’s London Games Conference. Electronic Arts’ Sean Decker has joined Google, Twitter and many other leading digital discovery and distribution firms to talk at the November 21st event. Decker runs EA’s Play4Free division, focused on free-to-play games, and his talk …

An ambitious RPG project by genre stalwarts Brenda Braithwaite and Tim Hall has been abandoned. The project was headed by Loot Drop, a studio that houses John Romero, Brenda Braithwaite and Tom Hall, and kicked off its Kickstarter drive earlier this month. The studio was after $1m to fund an …

Managing director of Disney’s recently formed Disney UTV Digital division Samir Bangara has resigned from the company. News of Bangara’s departure was first reported by Medianama and has since been confirmed to MCV by multiple reliable industry sources. Disney UTV Digital was recently formed following Disney’s acquisition of UTV to …

Anyone who believes in long-term job security is 'kidding themselves', says Tantalus CEO

Ubisoft is feeling confident about its upcoming open-world shooter Far Cry 3 – even though it launches just after Activision’s powerhouse franchise, Call of Duty. Far Cry 3 was originally set for launch in September but was pushed back for to give Ubisoft’s Montreal studio more time to create a …