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

US developer and publisher Trion Worlds has kicked off 2011 with the opening of a UK office. The MMO specialist’s new European headquarters will serve as a base of operations for ongoing global expansion as it bring its products to the UK. The studio has cherry-picked key trade execs for …

Studio preparing legal action as project funds run dry

Facebook game draws record numbers in just over a month, eclipsing FarmVille

The thriving game development cluster in Queensland has been severely disrupted by widespread flooding across the Australian state. Fruit Ninja developer Halfbrick has temporarily closed, the studio said, while its staff take time off to help friends and family”. Digital content agency Hoodlum, meanwhile, has evacuated its Paddington-based offices after …

Studio says it is 'too small to take on a company like Capcom'

Indie Open House scheme to provide tech, consultancy and media backing

As bricks and mortar looks to increase its digital footprint, GameStop has outlined plans to begin selling content directly into customer’s Xbox Live and PlayStation Network accounts. It would work by linking a user’s GameStop ID to their XBL and PSN accounts. The content would then be downloaded automatically when …

CityVille has reaffirmed itself as the most popular Facebook game ever by attracting over 100m users. The casual title developed by Zynga now has 100,064,578 monthly active users, putting it ahead of the firm’s other big Facebook offering FarmVille. This has 57m monthly users. CityVille launched on December 2nd and …

Up-and-coming Israeli firm PrimeSense has received $50 milling in funding. The company created some of the technology behind Kinect, as well as other devices that scan users and react to their gestures. The funding came from US private equity firm Silver Lake, as well as PrimeSense’s existing investors: venture capital …

Microsoft’s community voice Larry ‘Major Nelson’ Hyrb has claimed that the platform holder had such a successful Christmas in America that it actually ran our of hardware by the end of the period. "I found out we ran out of consoles at end of the month so [we] don’t expect …