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

Though the 11.4m subscribers to Blizzard’s world-conquering MMO World of Warcraft make for some impressive reading, it actually represents nearly a three year low for the game. The current number was revealed in Activision’s financials last night, Kotaku reports. The game reached its highest point in October last year as …

UK independent studio Jagex has scored a global publishing deal with social MMO New York children’s media firm Herotainment. The Runescape studio will use its online games expertise to publish Herotopia, an award-winning social online game for children”. The landmark agreement makes Herotopia the second third-party game released by Jagex’s …

Publisher Bethesda has said that will not alter plans to release multiplayer shooter Brink this Friday despite the fact that PSN may well not be back online in time for gamers. The game hit US retail today. It remains to be seen if the ongoing PSN outage, which for the …

But the firm says it won't tighten submission standards, and calls for more indies

German studio to adopt engine for multiplatform title Dead Block

Zynga’s has made a significant extension into the smartphone games space by hiring key contributors of open-source mobile tools. In a delicately arranged acquisition, Zynga has essentially taken some control of the open-source iPhone tool Cocos2d. It has achieved the feat, however, whilst keeping Cocos2d open and free to all …

Children's freemium MMO to re-launch in the summer

Echoing analysts predictions yesterday that Sony and Microsoft are preparing hardware price cuts, Activision boss Bobby Kotick has claimed that such a move is pending. We’ve more confidence in consumer spending," he told the Financial Times. "We feel like some of that has stabilised and there are price cuts on …

Thirteenth acquisition in twelve months as the Farmville group expands further

A host of independent retailers have told MCV they want to sell downloadable games. Retailers such as ShopTo, MyMemory and Barkman Computers are eyeing up moves to digital, although how they go about launching in this space is not clear. We’re looking at getting involved in the digital games market …