MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry
Mobile games sensation Draw Something has lost about five million daily active users in a single month, and is steadily dropping down the App Store charts on both iPhone and iPad, collected data suggests. Developed by New York studio Omgpop, Draw Something was the catalyst in a dramatic $210 million …
Read More »MS investigating Xbox credit card security risk
A report from Philadelphia’s Drexel University has claimed that users’ credit card details can be obtained from ‘wiped’ Xbox 360 hard drives. This is supposedly achieved with what are described as basic hacking tools”. Researchers were able to access files and folders on a 360 HDD that had been through …
Read More »Star Wars: Old Republic getting 1m log-ins a day
EA has announced that it has sold 2m copies of Star Wars: The Old Republic since its release in December, attracting 1.7m active subscribers in the process. Unique daily log-ins for the game stand at around 1m per day with an average playtime of approximately four hours per day. EA …
Read More »MW3 DLC restricted to one player profile
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 DLC can only be accessed by one player profile per console, forum complaints suggest.UPDATE: Activision aware of ‘unintentional’ problem. Users may have to purchase Elite content twice if they want to play it under a different profile on their Xbox 360 console – something …
Read More »Relaunched APB attracts 3m users in first week
In the first week since it officially relaunched, GamersFirst MMO title APB Reloaded has attracted 3m users. It’s a great start for a game that suffered the most brutal of failures when it was initially released last year. The game was seemingly left for dead in September 2010 when, after …
Read More »Team Fortress enjoys user boost
Counter-Strike’s deeply-embedded position as the most played Steam game has finally been dismantled, following a daring and controversial change in pricing policy from Valve. The Washington-based company rocked the games industry last week by re-releasing Team Fortress 2 as a free-to-play game. That triple-A game, at the time of writing, …
Read More »Anonymous accused of hacking Deus Ex site
Notorious hacker group Anonymous has been accused of being behind an online assault on Thursday that brought down both the Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Eidos websites. Krebonsecurity reports that both sites temporarily displayed an erroneous banner reading "Owned by Chippy1337" and were then downed for several hours. The unfolding …
Read More »BioWare caught posting own user reviews
Following an online investigation by Reddit user GatoFiasco, it has emerged that a member of the BioWare development team has posted a high-scoring user review on Metacritic in an attempt to inflate the overall Dragon Age II score. Alarm bells began ringing when a new user to the site posted …
Read More »Facebook leak hits Zynga users
Millions of Facebook users have had their personal information leaked to advertising companies through various Zynga games, it has emerged. A wall Street Journal investigation into the matter concludes that all of the 10 most popular apps on Facebook had been transmitting user IDs to external companies, igniting new criticisms …
Read More »Modern Warfare 2 still rules Xbox Live
The long awaited release of Halo Reach last week was the biggest games event of 2010 – but 2009’s gaming champ isn’t much impressed. According to figures from Microsoft’s Larry Hyrb, Activision’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was the most played game on Xbox Live for the week ending …
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