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

Premium game art production studio Mooncolony turns ten years old on the 1st of September, and to celebrate, they’re launching the first ever MoonFest.

Today sees three celebration-worthy announcements for the UK games industry: the creation of a new independent video game development studio called Pretty Cool Games, investment in the studio, and finally, the studio is hiring, providing a much-needed boost for the UK Game Development Community.

New marketplace data shows that traffic on websites related to GTA VI increased by over 6000% on 25 June compared with the average level recorded before May. Demand remained high over the following days, with average traffic between 25 and 30 June up to almost 3000% against the same baseline.

Leading games Quality Assurance specialist Testronic has unveiled a strengthened executive leadership team to drive the company’s next chapter of international growth, innovation and operational excellence, with Sonia Kerr appointed as Chief Executive Officer.

NC (formerly NCSOFT) has announced that it will transition the global publishing service of Throne and Liberty from Amazon Game Studios to its own online publishing services this year.

G2, one of the world’s leading esports and entertainment brands, today announced Wizards of the Coast, the publisher behind iconic franchises including Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons, as its new global partner on G2's Counter-Strike jersey. Marking the start of a long-term creative collaboration, the partnership will bring different games from Wizards of the Coast's portfolio to one of esports' most recognisable jerseys.

GamesAid, the UK's games industry charity, has appointed six new trustees to its board - including Dom Shaw as Vice Chair, Amelia Suchy as Treasurer and Catherine Anderson as Secretary - as £82,000 raised in the 2025/26 financial year begins making a tangible difference for the seriously ill, disabled and neurodivergent children and young people it supports.

Amazon Games and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment have announced Batman: Caped Crusader — Chronicles, a brand-new interactive experience developed in collaboration with Blazing Griffin, the Glasgow-based independent studio behind detective and mystery games Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot and Maurice Leblanc's Arsène Lupin. The game launches exclusively on Amazon Luna — Amazon's cloud gaming service — as part of its GameNight collection on 31st July 2026, the same day Season 2 of Batman: Caped Crusader premieres globally on Prime Video.

This is a press release posted alongside our usual editorial content. CodeDev Group today officially announces the launch of its new studio, Full Spectrum Interactive (FSI). Building off the group’s expert-first ethos, the new studio is steered by a core team of UK game development veterans, and is set to …

Research by distribution platform Playgama shows the number of HTML5 games released in the first half of 2025 had almost tripled year-on-year to 15,000. That's also 4.9 times the number that launched in H1 2023. Fellow distribution service Poki reports that it is seeing 100m monthly active users in 2026, up an order of magnitude since 2020's 10m.