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

Gem Distribution has appointed Lee Shuffield as vendor manager for leisure. Shuffield boasts more than 20 years of sales, account management and licensing experience, having working at games firms such as Playlogic, Ghostlight, Empire Interactive and Venom. In his new role, he will manage Gem’s relationships with a variety of …

Adam Hopkinson has joined the IGN UK team as commercial director. He joins from Target Media, where he worked for 12 years – most recently in the role of group trading director. He will now lead IGN’s sales team, operating across the company’s film, games and lifestyle brands and reporting …

Majesco has dusted off the BloodRayne series for its first digital-only outing. 2D side-scroller BloodRayne: Betrayal is currently in development for PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade, according to Eurogamer. It is being developed by Wayforward Technologies and is due to go live this summer. The game puts players in …

PlatinumGames has published an open letter that expresses its ‘deep sadness’ at the current state of the global games industry. In the letter, the Bayonetta and Vanquish studio’s president and CEO Tatsuya Minami also gave brief mention of a new vision for the Japanese company it has called Platinum Next. …

Several big name game publishers will be showcasing their products at the Kapow Comic Con in London this month. Nintendo, Ubisoft and Codemasters are backing the IGN Arena during the comic book, film and game consumer event. It runs from Saturday, April 9th to Sunday, 10th at the Islington Design …

Rift users have racked up over 285,000 years of play time since the game launched last month. Stats sent to IGN report that players have spent a combined total of 284,846 years in Rift’s world over the past 28 years –a period that is 84,000 years longer than it took …

Attendees at next week’s MCV Awards will be invited to donate towards industry charity GamesAid. A special envelope will be placed on each table at the sell-out event, and guests are encouraged to each put just 10 inside on the night. All of the money raised will be accumulated by …

Missed anything? Abandoned your desk when the sun came out? Hereâ??s the key info to take into April

This week attention turns to work in the Netherlands

Sony has released a collection of classic PSone titles on the Android Market. The five games are all compatible with the Xperia Play, the official PlayStation Phone that launched today. The range includes Cool Boarders 2, Destruction Derby, Jumping Flash, MediEvil 2 and Syphon Filter, according to Joystiq. These games …