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

Video game loot boxes have recently been a contentious issue in video games, with everyone offering an opinion. It’s almost like loot boxes have only just appeared, and haven’t been in games for years, a slippery slope gaming accepted when it first purchased armour for their horse in Oblivion for …

SpecialEffect celebrates its 10th anniversary this year and just raised over £300,000 during its One Special Day campaign. We talk to founder and CEO Dr Mick Donegan (pictured below) about what’s next for the gaming charity. Congrats on your 10th anniversary. How has SpecialEffect grown over the last ten years? We’ve increased the number …

Bluehole have filled in their development roadmap for the rest of 2017, paving the way for the game’s 1.0 release on PC and an Xbox Game Preview release by the end of the year. Bluehole, acknowledging their promises to deliver a full release to the PC by the end of …

Warner Bros’ Middle-earth: Shadow of War’s first weekend figures came out this morning and it looks to be down on what the company was hoping for the title. It’s still one of the better-selling titles of the year – in the top ten of 2017’s various Week One openings – but we …

Wargaming has opened a new mobile development studio in Moscow, the company has announced. Headed up by industry veteran Andrey Zimenko (pictured below), the studio will start developing "mid-core" titles for mobile platforms as soon as it has finished the hiring process for its new team.  Zimenko, who has 13 years …

Media giant IGN has acquired the pay-what-you-want game bundle service Humble Bundle, the companies have announced. Exact terms of the surprising deal haven’t been disclosed, but Humble Bundle has said it will now have "more resources and help from IGN" going forward. Otherwise, it’s still very much business as usual, …

Jungsoo ‘Surrender’ Kim has emerged as the victor of the Hearthstone Championship Tour Summer Championship, which took place at the new Blizzard Arena in Burbank. The South Korean player won out over Swedish Jon ‘Orange’ Westberg in the finals, earning himself $60,000 of the $250,000 prize pool, but also a …

Xbox console exclusive Cuphead has sold over a million copies in just two weeks, Studio MDHR has announced. Released on September 29th for Xbox One, Windows 10 and Steam, the 30s animation-style run and gun title received rave reviews from both critics and fans alike, and had been much hyped …

Wargaming Moscow to be headed up by former Mail.Ru studio head Andrey Zimenko

FaZe snagged $500,000 last night, securing victory in the ELEAGUE CS:GO Premier grand finals with a 2-0 victory over Astralis.  FaZe came back from a dominant opening on Cache that saw Astralis leading 12-3 at the start of the first half, from there, FaZe came into the game like a …