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

The first wave of free-to-play games have now gone live on Steam. Valve announced it is now offering support for such titles, including use of Steam’s micro-transaction backend system to handle in-game transactions. The system is already available to Steamworks partners and currently used in titles such as Team Fortress …

With a current 85 per cent Metacritic average under its belt, Ubisoft’s Child of Eden has got off to a strong start ahead of its UK release this Friday (June 17th). "If you played Rez though and came out the other side with a massive smile that lasted for days, …

MMO Transformers Universe producer Kris Jones to give keynote

Book now and save up to £700 on tables for Europe's biggest games awards night

Electronic Arts’ Sports division will open a chain of bricks and mortar stores in the US. The first shop – which will house a range of EA Sports games – opens this autumn at an airport in Charlotte, North Calorina. EA Sports told Forbes it hopes to open at least …

In a move that was perhaps always an inevitability, publisher EA looks to have played its next move in its strategic kerfuffle against Steam. Kotaku reports that recent shooter Crysis 2 has suddenly disappeared from Valve’s online portal. It can still be found, of course, on EA’s new Origin store. …

Microsoft will apparently announce a successor to the Xbox 360 at next year’s E3. That’s according to VideoGamer, which cites an anonymous "high ranking" source at developer Crytek. Who, incidentally, is working on Timsplitters 4 for the machine, according to the claims. DirectX 11 is said to be forming the …

Crysis 2 will likely become exclusive to publisherâ??s own rival service, Origin

Ahead of its AGM today, retailer GAME has admitted that trading to date in 2011 is significantly down on 2010. Choosing to once again blame what it sees as a global slump in the video games market, in the period between February 1st and June 11th GAME’s revenues are down …

When will it all end? Hacker group LulzSec launched its most ferocious assault to date last night, taking down three video games services in the process. Indie hit Minecraft saw its log-in servers targeted and disabled. The group soon lifted its assault – though not before the entire game was …