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

Studio's final project deemed unprofitable; Some 21 jobs affected

Deep Silver’s console and PC title Dead Island has claimed its second week at No.1 in the UKIE Gfk Chart-Track All Formats Top 40. It does so despite a shortage of copies on the High Street – and some retailers hiking the price to take advantage of the demand. It …

Having managed just five issues, Future has called time on its officially licensed World of Warcraft magazine. Subscribers are free to either claim a refund for the issues that will now never be published or instead claim a voucher entitling them to six in-game World of Warcraft pets. Current Activision …

Sony has finally confirmed that its PlayStation Vita handheld console will be region free, according to the president of Sony Worldwide Studios Shuhei Yoshida. The news is all the bigger, of course, as Nintendo decided to region lock the 3DS – the first time it has ever locked one of …

Online retail’s tendency to ship games early has irked its High Street rivals for years, but a new trick from GameStop hopes to protect the seller from accusations of early selling. It appears that GameStop.co.uk has already shipped some copies of Gears of War 3, with some customers receiving the …

UK supermarket chain Morrisons has hit the magic 25 price point for tomorrow’s big global release Gears of War 3. Supermarket promotions are no rarity on big titles, but prices can vary – and 25 is typically the cheapest you’ll find on any triple-A big release on day one. But …

PC digital distribution service Desura has launched Alphafunding, a crowdsourcing mechanism for funding indie game development projects. Alphafunding looks to formalise the process of supporting games which are in their early development phases by allowing people to become ongoing beta and alpha testers of games they support for the cost …

Drew Taylor has launched issue #0 of JumpButton, a new Australian magazine which focuses on the art and substance of videogame culture. JumpButton originally released in Australia several years ago for a brief run, but has been reborn with a new 64-page launch issue using MagCloud, a service which prints …

Though around 20 per cent have been deleted, says analytics firm

Retailer GAME has confirmed that it will host a second GAMEfest in 2012. It estimates that 30,000 gamers will attend the event at the Birmingham NEC, which opened its doors today and will run until Sunday. Partners for this year’s gathering include Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, EA and Activision. The most …