MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry
When Lionhead Studios made the decision to turn its latest entry in the long-running Fable franchise free-to-play, it knew one thing: not everyone was going to love it. The outlet announced back in February that upcoming co-operative action RPG Fable Legends wouldn’t cost a penny on either of its release …
Read More »EA ‘still believes’ in free-to-play, despite shutting down four games
EA has backed the free-to-play business model, despite revealing plans to shut down four of its biggest freemium games. The titles – Battlefield Heroes, Battlefield Play4Free, Need For Speed World and FIFA World – will go offline on July 14th. EA Studios boss Patrick Sderlund told fans that the games …
Read More »Heroes of the Storm has a release date
Blizzard has finally announced a release date for MOBA title Heroes of the Storm. The free-to-play game will receive a full release on June 2nd. It has been in closed beta for some time, and will make the jump to open beta on May 20th. It will launch with over …
Read More »Bandai Namco is making the Pixels mobile game
Upcoming movie Pixel will be joined by an associated mobile game from Bandai Namco. The free-to-play title takes the Sony Pictures Entertainment film and turns it into a tower defence title. Notably it will, like the movie, star characters from across the publisher spectrum including Pac-Man, Frogger and Q*bert. "With …
Read More »EA taking four free-to-play PC games offline
Titles will stay live for a further 90 days before shutting down for good
Read More »EA pulling plug on Battlefield Heroes, FIFA World and other F2P titles
EA has announced it will drop support for free-to-play PC titles Battlefield Heroes, Battlefield Play4Free, FIFA World and Need for Speed World. A post on the EA Blog reveals the company will shut down servers on July 15th, with the explanation being that the games are not as popular as …
Read More »Hearthstone is now available for smartphones
iPhone and some Android owners are now able to play Hearthstone on their mobile phones. A universal update to both the iOS and Android versions of the game means it is now compatible with iPhones (4S and beyond) and assorted Android (4.0 minimum) handsets – although support for the latter …
Read More »Bigpoint: ‘If you’re in free-to-play you should be targeting China’
CEO Khaled Helioui discusses why spending time to designing your game for the Chinese market may be worthwhile
Read More »Influence of whales over F2P mobile game revenue on the rise – report
A new study on free-to-play mobile game revenue shows that big spenders, known as whales,” still account for the majority of in-app sales. In fact, they’re taking up more of the pie than ever before. Gamasutra points to new research by mobile app analytics platform Swrve which shows the top …
Read More »The real next generation: MCV looks at the latest tech transforming PC
From VR to 4K, eSports to free-to-play, there has never been a better time to be gaming on PC. But what are the core driving factors behind the sector’s resurging success? MCV asked the PC experts THE VR REVOLUTION After years of developer-only prototypes, this year will finally see the …
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