Publishing

It seems as if Marvel Heroes will close a month ahead of schedule and that its developer Gazillion has been shut down. The game’s termination was announced last week, at which time it was claimed that it would continue to operate until the end of the year. Now multiple reports, …

Chancellor Phillip Hammond detailed the new incentives and schemes designed to help digital industries in the UK

Governments from both sides of the Atlantic have said they intend to take down video games loot boxes. PC Gamer reports that after declaring it was investigating loot boxes last week, the Belgium Gaming Commission has decided that they ARE a form of gambling. Furthermore, as a form of gambling …

In an almost admirable act of overt trolling, one US analyst has argued that EA’s decision to temporarily halt microtransactions in Star Wars Battlefront 2 was a mistake. “The handling of the launch by EA has been poor,” KeyBanc Capital Markets analyst Evan Wingren, as reported by CNBC. “Despite this, …

Such is the scale of the Star Wars Battlefront 2 outcry that another quieter controversy surrounding microtransactions in EA’s Need for Speed Payback has slipped under a lot of people’s radars. The game entered the UK charts at No.4 last week but this week dropped all the way to 11th. …

The Witcher developer CD Projekt has spoken out to quell concerns about the possible use of a ‘games-as-a-service’ model in upcoming RPG Cyberpunk 2077. “Worry not,” the studio said in a reply on Twitter. “When thinking CP2077, think nothing less than The Witcher 3 — huge single player, open world, …

In the hours leading up to its decision to suspend Star Wars Battlefront 2’s loot crate spending, EA has argued that the system is not a form of gambling. This is despite the news that two European countries are investigating just that question. Gamasutra reports that Belgian Gaming Commission general …

Publisher EA has bowed to the ever-growing pressure being heaped on Star Wars Battlefront II by disabling the game’s microtransactions completely. The move can be seen as a victory for the vocal critics who have being piling on the publisher non-stop for the last couple of weeks. EA, however, has …

Unlike the UK investigation, the Belgian research believes the mechanic is based on chance and counts as gambling

Stefan Berger, head of business development at UIG, tells MCV about the state of the simulation genre, the company’s shift from PC to consoles and its distribution partnership with Austrian publisher Toplitz Productions. Can you tell us a bit more about UIG for those who are unfamiliar with your work? …