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

UK consumer rights magazine Which? has complained to the solicitor’s watchdog about London law firm Davenport Lyons following what it calls the mailing of ‘bullying’ letters to ‘hundreds of innocent consumers’. Davenport Lyons is one of the chief players in recent moves to crack down on illegal internet filesharing. Along …

The HMV Group has revealed its financial results for the six months ending October 25th, reporting a post-tax loss of 19.8 million. The entertainment group – which also includes book specialist Waterstones – revealed that sales were up 3.5 per cent, but like-for-like sales had fallen flat. Like-for-like sales at …

Another gaming outrage is on the cards from the UK press, and this time it’s The Daily Mail which has reacted badly to the presence of a range of offensive words and slang in Nintendo DS title Scrabble Interactive 2007 Edition. 36 year old Tonya Carrington contacted the paper after …

Ubisoft is in negotiations to buy three separate games firms for approximately €5 million each. And the French publisher was even keen on buying US studio Cryptic, which was this week purchased by Atari. Speaking at the UBS Annual Global Media Conference Ubisoft CFO Alain Martinez said: "We have about …

Activision Blizzard will lose its European boss in the spring, after two years of impressive turnaround. Joerg Trouvain is returning home at the end of March to be closer to his family, switching to a CEO role at German online travel company HolidayCheck. After a role as boss of EA …

The Joint Administrators to Woolworths have today announced that a store closing sale will begin in stores on Thursday December 11th. The Administrators continue to actively seek buyers for the Woolworths assets and negotiations with a number of interested parties are ongoing. Neville Kahn, reorganisation services partner at Deloitte, commented: …

The latest UK High Street statistics from Synovate Retail Performance show that the number of non-food shopping trips made between November 30th and December 6th climbed by 10.1 per cent compared to the week before – though the number is still 4.1 per cent down on the same week in …

Woolworths could be facing its last few days on UK High Street with reports that administrator Deloitte has failed to find a buyer for the struggling retailer. RetailWeek speculates that the chain’s entire workforce, which totals around 30,000, are facing redundancy. Details of the national closing down sale are expected …

Gears of War 3 is set to arrive in time for Christmas 2010, claims US games magazine EGM. The information follows news that Gears of War 2 has sold through three million copies in just four weeks. According to the publication, the third game is set to include a ‘five …

New retail and marketing categories are being introduced to the MCV Industry Excellence Awards. Although the total number of awards on the evening will remain at 17, the retail section has been almost entirely overhauled. Every retailer, whatever size or product specialism, can now compete for all five prizes. There …