When it launches in September, CD Projekt's Good Old Games will offer cheap, DRM-free digital downloads of long-lost old-school PC titles like Fallout, Fallout 2, Jagged Alliance 2, Sacrifice, Descent 1-3 and Kingpin: Life of Crime, among others. Priced at either $5.99 or $9.99, these aren't straight re-releases. CD Projekt has done work to ensure that each game is now compatible with Windows XP and Vista, going so far as to create a custom installer for each game. The company is even planning to remove DRM from titles that featured copy protection upon their initial release.

But how does it actually work? How far back will GOG's offerings go, and what's stopping them from offering modern games as well?... Read more

Internet software giant Google today revealed Google Lively, a browser-based online world in which users can design rooms and avatars for chat and other functions.

Built with social networking web site integration in mind, Lively allows player-designed rooms to be embedded within a user's page on such sites as Facebook and MySpace. The tool is available now free of charge at the official web site.

Lively incorporates many features seen in Sony Computer Entertainment's PlayStation Home software, reflecting the recent push towards avatar creation and customization by the Nintendo Wii's Mii avatars and a similar system planned for the Xbox 360.

Google 3D operations head Mel Guymon told Gamasutra that Lively is ... Read more

In an era in which game piracy prompts formerly PC-exclusive studios to make the leap to consoles, Mass Effect developer BioWare has an alternative strategy to buck piracy: provide add-on content for its games and promote simple consumer loyalty.

"We're doing a lot of post-release downloadable content on all of our PC titles going forward," BioWare co-CEO Ray Muzyka told MTV Multiplayer. "We think it's a good thing to encourage players to make them want to buy a PC title.

"That's ultimately the best, most successful path to prevent piracy—to have players that want your games, want to believe in them and think they're high-quality and realize they're going to get a lot of value out of them as platforms for long time afterwards," Muzyka added.

It appears likely that the studio's next effort Dragon Age—which the studio plans to unveil tomorrow—will feature some sort of built-in copy protection, similar... Read more

A series of anti-piracy proposals in consideration by the European Union could result in internet users being permanently banned from the web if suspected of sharing copyrighted materials, the BBC reports.

The amendments also call for a Europe-wide "three strikes" law, which would ban users from the web after three warnings that they are suspected of sharing copyrighted materials on file-sharing networks. The laws also allow governments to decide what software can "lawfully" be used on the internet.

Digital rights campaigners claim that anti-piracy lobbyists have hijacked the proposals and worked in amendments that amount to an assault on the freedoms of web users.

"Tomorrow, popular software applications like Skype or even Firefox might be declared illegal in Europe if they are not certified by an administrative authority," said Foundation for a Free Internet Infrastructure representative Benjamin Henrion, who added that the proposals would create a "Soviet internet."

Piracy has become a grave concern for many developers worldwide, prompting studios such as Crytek, Infinity Ward, and several others to publicly voice their... Read more

Blizzard Entertainment COO Paul Sams criticized hardware manufacturer Microsoft's stewardship of the PC gaming market, suggesting that the company could do more to advance the platform.

"Well, their gaming focus is very much on the [Xbox] 360," Sams told Gamasutra. "And that makes sense, cause they're a hardware manufacturer as well as a software developer. And so they've got a lot of money and investment tied up in that system."

Sams referred to remarks made by Blizzard design VP Rob Pardo, who said at last week's Paris GDC that Microsoft's involvement in PC gaming amounts to "lip service", and that the company is more closely focused on supporting the Xbox ... Read more

Crytek chief executive Cevat Yerli offered an assessment of piracy within the PC gaming industry, describing the market as "the most intensely pirated market ever."

"It's crazy how the ratio between sales to piracy is probably 1 to 15 to 1 to 20 right now," Yerli told IGN. "For one sale there are 15 to 20 pirates and pirate versions, and that's a big shame for the PC industry."

Yerli added that he hoped to see some change with the release of Crytek's upcoming shooter follow-up Crysis Warhead. When asked if the game would include anti-piracy measures similar to Electronic Arts' activation protocols in the PC edition of BioWare's Mass Effect, the CEO didn't directly specify but hinted at some new ideas.

"Effectively, if the game isn't an online game or multiplayer game—there are challenges regardless of what you do—the game can be cracked. The effort is to... Read more

"There's been a lot of trend pieces about PC gaming is dying, and the decline of the PC, when that's absolutely not true. And in fact, it's not dying or declining, it's growing, and it's growing exponentially--and I think is on its way to growing even larger than the rest of the market."

As it turned out, the phrase "exponential growth" was used quite a bit during Games for Windows global director Kevin Unangst's speech, delivered Thursday on the upper floor of a posh studio in San Francisco. It became a sort of rhythmic meter, like the charted points on the many illuminated graphs behind him, all slowly marching upward to a triumphant rise of the PC gaming industry.

In theory.

Unangst quoted some big numbers--$11.3 billion worldwide for PC gaming, as compared to $14 billion worldwide for consoles, a closer comparison than one might imagine. More digits from DFC Intelligence suggest that the PC market will increase 73 percent from 2007 to 2013. All of these are figures that Microsoft wanted to see when it began the Games for Windows project in mid-2006.

But a year and a half later, it speaks to the metered, subtle approach of the program that Microsoft essentially held a meeting to remind people what it... Read more

A number of Valve's PC shooters will soon support Novint's Falcon controller (pictured left) as part of a new agreement, the companies have announced.

Serving as an alternative to the traditional mouse-based FPS control scheme, the Novint Falcon allows for three-dimensional freedom of movement and tactile response. Support for the peripheral will be added in an update distributed through Valve's digital download platform Steam.

Games slated to support the controller include Half-Life 2 and its two following episodes, Team Fortress 2, Portal and Counter-Strike: Source. Valve's ... Read more

A listing for a special collector's edition of EA Maxis' upcoming life simulator Spore has appeared on games retailer GameStop's website.

Dubbed the Spore Galactic Edition, the package includes a "Making of Spore" DVD, a "How to Build a Better Being" DVD created by the National Geographic Channel, a hardback Spore artbook and fold-out poster, and a 100-page Galactic Handbook in addition to the game itself.

The package is listed at a $79.99 price point, slated for release alongside its standard edition counterpart on September 7.

Unlike the recently released Metal Gear Solid 4 (PS3) limited edition, no mention of plans to sell the Galactic Edition exclusively at GameStop was made in the listing.

Update: While 2K Games has removed the install limit from the PC version of BioShock, other forms of copy protection are still present.

"Our other methods of copy protection remain," community manager Elizabeth Tobey elaborated. "You will still have to activate your copy, and you will still need to keep the disc in the drive. SecuROM has not been removed--just the activation limits on number of installs and number of computers you can install BioShock on simultaneously."

Tobey concluded with a promise that, "if we ever stop supporting BioShock [online activation servers], we will release a patch so that the game is still playable."

Original Story: Publisher 2K Games has disabled the installation limit built into the PC edition of 2K Boston and Australia's BioShock, lifting a restriction which allowed users only five simultaneous installations of the deep sea first-person shooter.

Last year, BioShock creator Ken Levine assured gamers that the DRM would be disabled when retail sales of the game were "no longer a factor."

"As promised, all activation restrictions, including install limits, have been removed from BioShock PC as of today. You don't have to patch or install anything for... Read more

Several gamers have complained that the digital rights management software built into the PC version of BioWare's Mass Effect (PC, 360) only allows three lifetime installations, regardless of whether the user uninstalls the game.

According to consumer advocacy website The Consumerist, a tech support representative at publisher Electronic Arts confirmed to a user on the official Mass Effect forums that no additional activations are earned by uninstalling the game.

Those gamers who have reached their three install limit must contact EA technical support to request additional activations. Though the protocol is meant to guard against piracy, many affected users claim that hardware issues, operating system ... Read more

Ex-Ion Storm developer and Deus Ex series creator Warren Spector expects to see shorter games as development budgets continue to escalate.

"Game costs are going to be $35-40 million, even $100 million, and the expectations are huge," Spector said at last week's Game Education Summit, going by Gamasutra. "You have to differentiate yourselves. One-hundred hour games are on the way out."

"How many of you have finished [Grand Theft Auto IV]? Two percent, probably. If we're spending $100 million on a game, we want you to see the last level," he continued.

"Building a game is as complex as making as a Hollywood movie... It used to be that you could trade off gameplay for graphics, but you can't do that anymore... Read more

PC Gaming Alliance president and Intel gaming program director Randy Stude offered commentary on the health of the PC gaming industry, expressing amusement at sales tracking firm NPD's recent move to track MMO subscription sales.

"I chuckle when I read through the articles or opinion that say that PC gaming is in a decline and they continue to quote NPD's North American retail sales figures as the reason why they believe they're in decline," Stude told Crave.

He added, "NPD decided in the first quarter of 2008 to attempt to quantify North American MMO subscription revenues. And lo and behold, after just a quarter of research, they found—under a rock that they hadn't looked at before—a billion dollars."

The director elaborated upon the goals of the PCGA, a consortium aimed at providing a forum for developers to collaborate on the marketing, production, and ... Read more

Hidden amongst the many internal documents that marketing research firm Intellisponse inadvertently supplied to the public was something called Trioxide, which is said to allow PCs to play "the latest console games" with the original controllers.

How exactly Trioxide would accomplish this feat was not addressed in the now-removed documentation, which was partially preserved at NeoGAF. Of the three major systems on the market, only the Wii's controllers do not use USB plugs.

Two price points were listed, $49 and $299, suggesting that there may be some sort of hardware component to Trioxide, such as a capture card for display input.

Keep in mind, this information comes from a marketing research firm, so it could merely represent a product concept, not one that is currently in production. Read on for more details, including the Intellisponse-supplied product description... Read more

Following Time Warner's announcement that it plans to meter internet usage in North America, telecom corporation AT&T revealed that it is considering a similar plan to charge consumers extra for exceeding internet usage caps.

Company spokesman Michael Coe explained to the Associated Press that the top 5 percent of AT&T's DSL customers consume 46% of its total bandwidth, and overall usage is doubling every year and a half.

"A form of usage-based pricing for those customers who have abnormally high usage patterns is inevitable," Coe said, adding that AT&T has not yet decided on any specific plans or fees for its subscription packages.

While relatively common overseas, capped internet subscription programs have been rather scarce in the United States, and are likely to concern some gamers.

An HD movie downloaded from Microsoft's online Xbox Live Marketplace typically weighs in at 4.5GB, and demos of upcoming games can be in excess of a full... Read more

Service-oriented. Outsourcee. Bootstrapper.

There is no easy way to describe a studio like Demiurge. The video game industry is a tough one for small fries, but the company has taken an almost workhorse-style approach in the effort to keep its independence. No job's too big, no job's too small.

With many independent developers like Iron Lore--a company that once contracted Demiurge--shutting their doors or being bought up, Demiurge's strategy of solving other studios' problems has lead to increasing freedom and success. It's also gotten the team hands-on time with some of the industry's most valued properties, including BioShock, Medal of Honor, and now Mass Effect.

Recently I sat down for a chat with studio head Al Reed, fresh off the launch of the company's PC port of Mass Effect. We touched on the copy-protection controversy, the challenge of porting the game, flying rubber frogs, and the studio's... Read more

Nvidia VP of content business development Roy Taylor believes that the success of consoles "don't threaten PC gaming," but rather provides an "exciting future" as PCs will later receive enhanced editions of console games.

"The console is a baseline, the PC is going to be an improved version," he explained to Eurogamer. "If you look at Gears of War or Assassin's Creed...the PC versions had additional aspects to them that also made them attractive, whether you owned the console version or not. The PC version was better. That's an exciting future."

Echoing the sentiment of Crysis developer Crytek, Taylor expects to see less PC-exclusives as a result of rampant piracy and the "value of consoles," but noted that PCs should see more digital authentication and "service" releases in the future.

"You're going to start out with a basic service, which is the game, and then increase the value of that service through patches, mod packs, expansions, maps and so on," Taylor explained. "Most PC gamers also own consoles--not all of them, but a lot of them."

"PC gaming is changing and consoles don't threaten PC gaming. They're just different, he concluded. "That's why I don't see anything threatening about consoles at all."

The fall release of Crysis Warhead will be Crytek's last PC-exclusive effort, Crytek business manager Harald Seeley has revealed.

Earlier this year, Crytek president Cevat Yerli said that the studio would no longer have any PC-exclusive titles due to issues with piracy and higher sales on consoles. However, the company announced Crysis Warhead as a PC-only release last week.

"He was referring to any new projects we will start in the future," Seeley clarified to Next Generation. "Warhead has been under development for quite some time, and we had no desire or intention to disappoint our loyal PC fans."

Though some blame Crytek's unhappiness with Crysis's retail performance on the shooter's technically-demanding nature, Seely denied that the game's requirements had any impact on its sales.

"Other's lower perceived hardware requirements did not actually translate to bigger overall sales numbers than Crysis," he explained. "You only have to look at the comparative PC sales volumes of other prominent FPS games which shipped around the same time."

Retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor announced her involvement in the development of an educational online civics game for middle school students called Our Courts, Game|Life reported today.

O'Connor, who made the announcement as part of the closing keynote address at this year's Games For Change conference, will be collaborating with University of Wisconsin-Madison professor James Paul Gee and other educators to create the game. Our Courts is expected to arrive in September of 2009.

The retired justice explained that American students aren't learning enough about civics and government, and that games could prove a useful tool to strengthen civics education. Early exercises in the game, for example, will use recent Supreme Court hearings to educate students about their First Amendment rights.

"E-mailing, blogging, networking on Facebook—they can take leadership, make their voices heard through tools that belong to their generation. We need ... Read more

At yesterday's Wedbush Morgan Securities conference, Atari founder Nolan Bushnell claimed that a stealth encryption chip will "absolutely stop piracy of [PC] gameplay."

"There is a stealth encryption chip called a TPM that is going on the motherboards of most of the computers that are coming out now," explained Bushnell, according to a GamesIndustry report.

"What that says is that in the games business we will be able to encrypt with an absolutely verifiable private key in the encryption world--which is uncrackable by people on the internet and by giving away passwords--which will allow for a huge market to develop in some of the areas where piracy has been a real problem."

Piracy has been a hot-button issue in the PC gaming industry for some time now, with renowned PC developers such as Crytek, id, and Epic claiming that the high rate of pirated PC software forced them to put games on other platforms.

"I've seen studios close as the result of it, I've seen people lose their... Read more