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

In the latest development on the seemingly bubbling feud between publisher EA and Valve’s digital retail portal, claims are circulating that Battlefield 3 will not be available to buy through Steam. As spotted by Joystiq, EA published a list of digital retailers through which the game will be available. EA’s …

Riptide and Projkt Nine to form as one unit with two offices; Group targets freemium mobile market

Cult download hit Super Meat Boy will arrive in the form of two UK retail special editions on August 26th. Fans will be able to pick up the Ultra Edition for 19.99 or an Ultra Rare Edition for 24.99. Both include a soundtrack, comic, sketch book and poster, while the …

CCP’s experimental console shooter Dust 514 won’t be quite as free-to-play at launch as we had come to expect. Upon its unveiling at E3 in June, it was revealed that as well as being digital-only the game would also be F2P, with in-game microtransactions encouraged by the developers. However, CCP …

MCV’s annual High Street directory provides an overview of every buying team for each key UK video games retailer, as well as up-to-date store counts, company profiles and contact details. Game and Gamestation The UK’s leading specialist games retailer has had a tough year, with sales falling by 9.8 per …

PS Vita dev kit to be inexpensive; Touch-only games encouraged

PSN users in the US will now be able to sign up for protection against identity theft until July 31st. The offer was originally due to expire on June 28th, but a post from on the PlayStaiton Blog reveals Sony is extending this by an extra month. The post read: …

Triumph Leisure Solutions (TLS) has acquired the World Cyber Games (WCG) brand and plans to open e-sports up to a broader community, while raising the level of the competitions themselves. For the last few years, various Australian owners of the brand haven’t been able to bring the event to the …

An intensive live event designed to engage and excite Call of Duty fans will make them forget all about EA’s rival Battlefield. That’s presumably the intention of publisher Activision, which announced the COD XP event last week.XP is billed as the ultimate, fully-immerse live experience” by Activision Publishing CEO Eric …

QV Software (QVS) has acquired the distribution rights to Dead Island for Australia and New Zealand. The controversial Techland-developed game will be one of QVS’ biggest ever releases. CEO Paul Elliot said: As a company, we take pride in aligning ourselves with market leading publishers and exciting brands and products. …