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

When I spoke to Sam Braithwaite, it was halfway through Heroes of the Storm’s Mid-Season Brawl, a tournament set out by Blizzard to act as, well, the halfway point of the season. As the name suggests. Braithwaite, the esports franchise lead for Heroes of the Storm, is in good spirits. …

Psyonix’s car-based kickabout Rocket League is two years old this month, and while most toddlers can’t even string a sentence together, Rocket League has managed to mark itself out as one of the most promising esports of the generation. Over those two years, Rocket League has picked up 33m players, …

Sybo Games has appointed Amy Kalson as senior game developer. Kalson previously worked at EA as creative director and at Disney Interactive as senior design producer, and has also contributed to brands including Bejeweled and The Sims. In her new role, Kalson will play a key role in the continuing …

The London-based multiplayer gaming studio teams up with the World of Tanks developer and is looking to hire

Atari finally offered a first look at its new mysterious console, after teasing the product at E3 2017. Called the Ataribox, it aims at delivering both classic gamingcontent” and current gamingcontent,” the announcement reads, without further details on what we should expect. Atari rather chose to focus on giving details …

A popular streamer has gotten the boot from PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds after teamkilling a random player live on stream, violating the game’s terms of service. Dr DisRespect, who has 651,114 followers on Twitch and had 22,000+ at the time of his ban, killed a fellow player because there wasn’t space on …

Hand-tracking company Leap Motion has raised another $50m in Series C funding led by JP Morgan Asset Management, the firm has announced. This brings Leap Motion’s total fund-raising amount to just over $94m, according to Crunchbase. As described in a blog post on Leap Motion’s website, the funding will allow …

Dodge Roll Games’ Enter the Gungeon has reached a new milestone. The studio behind the roguelike title announced on Twitter (see below) that Enter the Gungeon has gone platinum” and sold over 1m copies. Published by indie label Devolver Digital, Enter the Gungeon launched to critical praise back in April …

Amazon has announced a new startup accelerator program for its smart voice assistant Alexa device, and London-based developer Sensible Object is the only company from the UK to make the list. The Alexa Accelerator, powered by Techstars, was created by the Alexa Fund, which provides up to $100m in VC …

The technology focused game developer is the only UK studio selected for the program