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

Riot Games and Big Ten have announced a new partnership that will see a new Collegiate League of Legends competition be broadcast on the Big Ten Network. The competition will feature twelve teams from Big Ten schools and kicks off on January 30th. Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, Michigan, Michigan State, …

Crowdfunding and investment platform Fig has announced it’s secured $7.84m of funding in its first round of venture capital financing, a sum the company says will allow it to expand the number of game projects it can host going forward. VC firms Spark Capital and Greycroft led the round of …

Ronnie Screwvala, who made his money in film and TV in India, is set to invest almost $15 million into eSports in order to launch a major league in the country.  Screwvala’s company USports is looking to set up the competition, and is looking to broadcast it on TV both …

The American games market is on the rise, with consumer spending increasing by $200m in 2016. That’s according to a report from US games trade body the ESA and market tracker NPD, which says the nation’s games industry generated $30.4bn in 2016. 2015’s figure was $30.2bn. That includes revenue from hardware, software, …

The University of Toronto has become the first university in Canada to offer an eSports scholarship to students.  The Victor Xin Scholarship in eSports has been funded, as you may have guess, by Victor Xin a UoT alumnus who is a managing partner at an investment firm. Any undergraduate student …

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive organisation Astralis has just announced a new sponsorship deal with German car manufacturer Audi.  The deal is supposedly work just under $750,000 according to Dot eSports, and will see the Audi logo appear on player clothing and other branding. Exact specifics of what the deal includes outside …

The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth publisher Nicalis has tweeted a picture giving us a sneak peek of the Switch’s user interface as well as some previously unannounced indie games coming to the platform. The studio has now deleted the tweet but it was online long enough for NeoGaf users to …

The American games market saw year-on-year decline in December. According to research from US market trackers NPD, $2.78bn was made from hardware, physical and digital software, PC and accessories, a dip of 15 per cent on December 2015. The biggest decline game from games hardware, which saw a 20 per …

Netflix has become somewhat omnipresent in modern technology, with the streaming service available on most games consoles, set top boxes, smart TVs, smartphones, tablets and even some fridges. It won’t be appearing on Nintendo Switch at launch, though. Nintendo, responding to queries from Kotaku, stated that the streaming service, along …

Yacht Club Games has announced its upcoming Shovel Knight expansions, Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove and Shovel Knight: Specter of Torment will be launching on Nintendo Switch first during the console’s launch window. Other platforms will follow after sometime in the spring. Yacht Club Games has yet to reveal specific release …