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

New outfit Yippee to focus on casual and social titles

Credit ratings agency Standard & Poor’s has downgraded Sony’s credit rating to A-, citing concerns over long-term corporate credit and senior unsecured debt ratings. The likelihood of Sony’s weak earnings persisting has increased”, the ratings group said. There are no signs of a halt to the deterioration in the earnings …

Some lucky gamers are going to be given the chance to play Star Wars: The Old Republic as early as five days before its official release on December 20th. Those who have pre-ordered the PC title will shortly receive an Early Game Access code. Once redeemed it gives the customer …

Web space redirected to hacker site before shutdown

Feargus Urquhart, the CEO of developer Obsidian, has criticised the use of the Online Pass in the industry’s battle against pre-owned video games. One of the recent issues is not putting the full game in the package and requiring downloadable content to move on. Also, including DLC in the package …

No signs that the company will come out of red soon, financial group claims

Warner Brothers has reduced its game development workforce across its Washington state studios, the company has confirmed. It is estimated that around sixty staff have been let go, though Warner would not confirm the number, nor which studio were affected. The firm’s Seattle-based development cluster includes three high-profile studios; Monolith …

The British Board of Film Classification has awarded Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 an 18 certificate and given it the green light without censoring its content. The certificate was granted for strong bloody battle violence”. WARNING: Potential very minor plot spoilers ahead Design features unearthed by the report include …

It may be one of Britain’s oldest and most reputable department stores, but John Lewis has been a poor games retailer. Our Mystery Shopper has reviewed John Lewis three times in the past 12 months, awarding scores of 1/10, 2/10 and N/A. The latter happened just last month in Stratford, …

Gamex 'not a place for political conflict'