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

The freemium model for video games isn’t just a sector that Nintendo will be avoiding – it’s one that president Satoru Iwata believes actually threatens the health of the industry. "When we look at the entire system of freemium, it’s not always that everyone is happy with the offers," he …

LulzSec has hit EVE Online with a DDOS (distributed denial of service) attack for the second time in two days. The hacker group – which has already claimed responsibility for attacking Nintendo, Epic Games, Square Enix, Codemasters and Minecraft websites – hit EVE Online again last night. Its biggest series …

Publishing giant suggests Steam business terms are draconian

An experienced Rockstar North games designer has broken away from the company to open his own micro-studio. Anthony Gowland is building mobile and web content at the new Edinburgh outfit, known as Mainly About Games. With the varied distribution opportunities now available to developers, it felt like the perfect time …

Months after the game originally hit the headlines, Ubisoft’s We Dare has once again ignited the spark of controversy. The game went unnoticed for months earlier this year until Ubisoft went live with what some – although certainly not MCV – felt to be controversial trailer for the Wii title. …

Publisher 2K Games has confirmed that it has ditched US PR firm The Redner Group. Redner hit the headlines yesterday after publicly threatening to blacklist – as in, stop sending out review code for upcoming games – any media that it felt was too harsh on the critically slammed Duke …

Publisher EA has denied that it took the decision to remove Crysis 2 from Valve’s download service Steam. Yesterday it was reported that EA had taken the game off Valve’s portal and instead put it on its own Origin download service, complete with the slogan "Buy Now – Only on …

Simulation company inks licensing agreement with German AI specialist

Anthony Gowland opens micro-studio in Edinburgh

It was once billed as a US revolution on the UK High Street, but now big question marks hang over the future of Best Buy in the UK. The European joint venture with Carphone Warehouse posted a loss of 62m this week – that’s triple the loss seen in 2010 …