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

EA title The Sims Social has seen its MAUs surpass that of Facebook giant Farmville on the social network. In total it now has an MAU base of 36m users. VentureBeat reports that EA’s title picked up 1.7m new users yesterday alone, taking its weekly MAU gain over 8m users. …

Gaming news and reviews website Electronic Theatre has relaunched after reaching a new monthly user milestone. Since launching in 2003 the site now reaches over 300,000 unique visitors per month. The redesign is part of a bid to draw 500,000 monthly visitors by April 2012. The new website has received …

Leading independent online games retailer ShopTo.net has doubled its warehouse capacity as we enter the busy Q4 period. It means that in the region of 1,600 items are now available in its under five minute dispatch” offer. It says that system makes ShopTo the fastest dispatch company in the games …

One of the worst kept secrets in the games industry is out – developer Starbreeze is indeed working on a brand new Syndicate game for EA. The publisher has given it a release date of early 2012 on PS3, Xbox 360 and PC. Coming in the wake of Deus Ex’s …

A slightly slower time at retail than the Deus Ex-fuelled week last week, but El Shaddai, Star Fox 64 3D and Rise of Nightmares are keeping the core games coming. Star Fox 64 3D is the 3DS reimagining of the classic franchise for Nintendo’s handheld, and is available on Thursday …

GAME Australia has introduced a revamped reward card scheme which has ruffled a few feathers down under with (pictured) risque advertising. The new scheme, dubbed GAME ON, rewards consumers with 10 points per $1 spent, with 1000 points being claimable as $2 back on in-store purchases. Ben Grant, marketing director …

Australian indie developer Dinoroar Interactive has announced today the launch of its new iOS game Tapmatic. The game is a memory-based game of duplication, where players are tasked with recreating an increasingly difficult coloured sequence of button presses. Aileen Bautista, founder and CEO of Dinoroar, said: "This game isn’t for …

But younger customers play for longer

This week we're focusing on the ever-in-demand programmer roles

UK production firm to focus on other media