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

Valve head honcho Gabe Newell has suggested that his company may be forced to hold The International outside of the US if travel restrictions get any worse. When speaking to Polygon, Newell said that if restrictions on who can enter the US get any worse the company may be forced …

It’s financial report season in the games industry, and several companies have revealed that digital sales are on the rise. Microsoft kicked things off stating its software sales and services revenue were up 18 per cent year-on-year, and that digital transactions reached $1bn [800m] this quarter. The company also revealed …

Overwatch has become the fastest Blizzard franchise to reach 25m players worldwide, with its Q4 monthly active users reaching a new franchise high, Activision Blizzard revealed in its Q4 financial results. Overwatch also now holds the record for the strongest launch year in terms of financial performance, beating the previous …

Cloud9 has announced that they will not be competing at the Intel Extreme Masters Katowice later this month, partly due to the new US travel restrictions.  According to the announcement from IEM, Cloud9 have chosen not to travel over to Poland to compete in order to focus on their run …

Delaware North, the company behind the Boston Bruins NHL team, has invested in eSports organisation Splyce.  Specifics of the deal were not announced, however Delaware North will be helping out the organization in multiple areas, and will hope to hold eSports events at the TD Garden, a venue that the …

Ran by Michael Boniface, formerly of Reloaded Productions

ESL has announced that it is extending its payment partner deal with paysafecard for another year.  The deal first started back in 2015, with paysafecard coming in as the payment partner for ESL events such as ESL One, the ESL CS:GO Pro League and many of the company’s regional competitions.  …

Activision’s toy-to-life franchise Skylanders won’t be back for 2017, the company has confirmed, but a new entry in the series will resurface at some point in the future, according to Eurogamer. With most of the Skylanders team at Vicarious Visions having now been moved on to work on Destiny, the …

2016 was another good year for Warner Bros and LEGO in the UK. Although the publisher’s software market share decreased compared to 2015 (from 9.9 per cent in units to 6.4 per cent in 2016), there were still four LEGO games in the year’s Top 50. LEGO Star Wars: The …

Comedian Rob Beckett will host this year’s MCV Awards. The 8 Out of 10 Cats team captain, plus regular guest on Mock the Week, Taskmaster, Live at the Apollo, has also appeared in sitcom Fresh Meat, Drunk Histories and co-hosted I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! The MCV …