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

Entry costs are a big problem for Hearthstone. Existing players facing growing expenditure to keep up with the new cards and keep their decks relevant in the constantly shifting Standard meta, while new players face an almost impossible outlay to build a competitive deck. But upcoming expansion Kobolds and Catacombs …

What a difference a year makes. Call of Duty WW2 has braved the artillery fire of franchise fatigue. Stormed the machine gun nests of digital shift and put a Churchill-like two fingers up to the loot crate furore. Some had written off the franchise after last year’s less-than-stellar sci-fi outing, …

The Overwatch League will host three matches a day for four days a week starting from preseason on December 6th. Blizzard has announced that each of the 12 teams will play 40 games between January and June. Half of these teams will then progress to the month-long post season. The …

Nintendo’s Switch platformer Super Mario Odyssey was the comfortable Japanese No.1 in its debut week, according to Famitsu data. The game sold 512k units in its first three days on sale, although unlike other territories this is not a record for the series – in fact, it’s the fourth highest …

Remember those hundreds of hours you spent hunting down collectibles to claim an elusive Platinum Trophy? It turns out they weren’t such a waste of your time after all. PS4 owners in the United States are now able to trade in their Trophies in return for (admittedly small) amounts of …

Blizzard’s hugely successful RTS title StarCraft 2 will become a free-to-play game later this month. From November 14th, all players will have access to the Wings of Liberty single player game for zero cost. Existing owners of Wings of Liberty will be able to claim the Hearts of the Swarm …

Chinese publisher Perfect World has closed Runic developer Torchlight and stripped down Gigantic creator Motiga, both of which were based in Seattle. Perfect World says that it will continue to sell Runic’s existing titles (Torchlight, Torchlight II and Hob) while Gigantic will continue under the stewardship of a small handful …

Activision’s Call of Duty: WWII is a hit, claiming a very firm UK No.1 on its debut week. The shooter bucked the trend of High Street declines by posting unit sales some 57 per cent higher than last year’s COD: Infinite Warfare. Revenue was up 21 per cent year-on-year. The …

Following the closure of Motiga, more jobs are lost as the publisher moves to games-as-a-service strategy

Develop asks Forza Horizon developer Playground Games for their top tips for creating fireworks in video games