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

Counter Strike: Global Offensive’s latest patch went live on Monday, and there’s good news for the professional scene. The headline changes are a Tec-9 rebalance, and a fix for the jumping bug that plagued last month’s CS:GO major in Krakow. The Tec-9 rejig is reported the start of a wide-ranging …

Esports games and their players generate a lot of data for developers. DC Labs visualisation and data analytics experts Florian Block and Anders Drachen talk about how we can put this data to even better use

Team Liquid is looking to disband their Overwatch team and sell their slot in Overwatch Contenders, with Season 2 starting on August 14. That’s the story according to ESPN, who claim sources close to the matter have confirmed this. Team Liquid haven’t responded to comment, but it would fit with …

Hot off the back of its latest expansion, Square Enix has announced that Final Fantasy XIV has now surpassed 10m cumulative players worldwide. That figure does, admittedly, include free trial accounts, but to put that number in perspective, that’s still more than the total population of Scotland and Wales combined. …

The daily active user (DAU) is a common engagement metric, often used in gauging companies’ performance and value. In gaming, however, DAUs vary markedly across mobile, PC, console and social. The differences are seen in penetration rates, demographics, engagement and spending trends. As the silo walls between gaming formats gradually …

Toys-to-life has had something of a rough ride of late after the shutdown of Disney Infinity. As some analysts have argued in the pages of MCV, that downturn may have been overstated, but it’s clear the genre still has its problems. Ubisoft’s exciting new Starlink: Battle for Atlas, however, looks …

Newly formed publisher Keystone Games has announced it’s bringing Big Fat Alien and Blue Sock Studio’s fantasy FPS title Rogue Islands out of Early Access into a full worldwide release this September. Keystone Games, which is currently headed up by industry veteran Jane Rachel Whittaker, will also be supporting the …

Tencent Games is stepping into European gaming market with an authentic 5V5 mobile MOBA game, Arena of Valor, which is published by Proxima Beta, a division of Tencent Games. Arena of Valor has been already launched in South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam where it was an instant success. Within …

“At the beginning of this year, I was in Texas and I asked if it was possible to see the id Software studio. So, I came in, saw the place, and started talking to everyone asking if any of the guys at id needed help on any of this stuff.” …

Often derided as passive gameplay, are quick time events and button prompts actually a wonderful and emotional way to the close a story? Sean Cleaver recalls his experiences with relinquishing control in finales