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

Hearthstone’s Spring Championship Lan final will be taking place in Shanghai, with players competing for a chunk of a $250,000 prize pool. The event will take place from July 7-9 at the Shanghai Expo Center, with 16 players made up of the top four players from Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific and …

Job Simulator and Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality developer Owlchemy Labs is now owned by Google. Google is going big on VR following the release of its Daydream platform, and the studio’s early success with Job Simulator clearly made it a priority target. Owlchemy recently discussed the importance it placed …

Gfinity have announced that the Elite Draft — and attached Elite Series — will not take place until a later date. The Draft was due to be held on Friday but has now been delayed indefinitely. London-based Gfinity have claimed the Draft is delayed due to an extension of the …

No word on potential buyers, staff or the future of Hitman franchise

A shadow of uncertainty has been cast over Hitman developer Io Interactive this morning. Square Enix has just announced that it has put the studio up for sale. Io was acquired by Eidos in 2004, which in turn was acquired by Square Enix in 2009. Io’s most recent release was …

ESL have announced a deal with Emirates Airline, allowing passengers on any Emirates flight to watch on-demand esports content from ESL in-flight. The partnership is a big one for esports fans, the first of its kind to allow air passengers to watch esports matches on demand using an in-flight entertainment …

Bandai Namco has announced pre-orders for Project Cars 2 are now open for PS4, Xbox One and PC. Three different special editions will be available at launch in addition to the standard version of the game, but two of them are exclusive to certain retailers. Starting with the Limited Edition, …

Over the last week four organisations: Splyce, CompLexity, Denial and Red Reserve have all folded their Overwatch teams, stepping away from the popular shooter just as Blizzard are starting up the hype-machine for their own competitive juggernaut, the Overwatch League. Why are teams stepping away from Overwatch? The answer is …

Nintendo is launching a new Switch accessory set that includes the console dock next month, the platform holder has announced. Launching on June 23rd, the kit will also come with an AC adapter and an HDMI cable, allowing consumers to replace any part of their Switch setup without having to …

Prey launched to mixed success in the UK last Friday. Despite making it to No.2 in the UK charts, it was still pipped to the post by Nintendo’s Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, which enjoyed its second week at No.1 after its Switch release on April 28th. It’s not a great …