Games

I'm not sure if this qualifies as a Streisand Effect, but in the case of Spore, the stimulus and the response are palpable. The anti-DRM backlash against Spore is at least partly responsible for the more than 35,000 illegal downloads of the game reported between Wednesday and Thursday, a figure revealed by Forbes in a look at the game's "piracy problem." The quotes from hackers, crackers and others in download forums seems to suggest they were provoked by what they see as a needless insertion of DRM restrictions on the game.

EA has been dealing with something of a PR problem with Spore, as gamers bomb the Amazon ratings with one-star reviews to make their feelings known on the issue of DRM. Who can blame them? Placing a limit on how many times you can install a game you own, and doing so after the game has already been made available via the expected channels online in pirated form, is lame. EA wants you to know that it is listening, however, and the install limit for Red Alert 3 has been raised to five.

Spore, the eagerly-awaited computer game five years in the making allowing people to play God by re-creating the universe, hits stores worldwide this week.

The latest brainchild of game legend Will Wright, maker of the world's top-selling computer game The Sims, Spore is being released in Europe and Asia on Friday ahead of its September 7 debut in the United States, with some pre-ordered versions available here late last week.

Gearing up for Labor Day, but maybe you're not sure what game to play on your day off? Well perhaps you'll want to revisit a true classic, as Electronic Arts has announced that they're now giving away the original Command & Conquer: Red Alert as a free download in celebration of the 13th anniversary of the series (and a reminder that Red Alert 3 is totally coming out soon).

NES games on your PS3? Yes you read correctly, there is a way to play your old Nintendo games on your next gen system, the PS3 and it doesn’t involve hacking at all. I know its amazing news, hit the jump for details.

Hackers have tried to hack the PS3 since it’s launch back in 2006 (read our console hack story). However so far hackers have failed to do so while other systems like the Xbox 360 and the Wii have been hacked out the wazoo. Beside being able to play copied games one big reason hackers want to hack game consoles is to run emulators and play old school games.

According to an online poll conducted by What They Play, 3,000 parents are more concerned about their child playing video games than drinking alcohol or watching porn.

The first poll which took place April this year, with 1,266 participants found that nine per cent of parents think repeated use of the F-word in games is unacceptable. A huge 37 per cent are more offended by a man and woman having sex on a game – where did their kids come from?

Thai authorities banned the Grand Theft Auto computer game on Tuesday, after a disturbed teenager allegedly killed a taxi driver in a copycat crime.

Following news earlier Tuesday that the game's distributor would no longer stock the game, Thai police told AFP they had officially banned it because of "obscene" content.

When makers of one of the most anticipated video games of the year invited users to help design part of the game, the gamers jumped at the chance to create animated characters. But some took it upon themselves to create something entirely different: a new kind of Internet porn.

It started when the makers of "Spore" released a Creature Creator program that allowed users to develop their own characters to drum up hype before the game's scheduled release in September.

Anyone who's been mercilessly pummeled by a fistful of undesired consonants can tell you that board games are too often serious business. Add the anonymity and general dyspeptic attitude of the internet, and it's surely a recipe for short fuses.

Witness: the white-hot passion and misdirected vengeance of fans of the popular Facebook word game Scrabulous. It began when the Scrabulous developers were recently forced to disable the game for users in the US, UK, and Canada following legal action by Hasbro.

Ah yes, the much highly anticipated fall dashboard update that will bring us avatars and a new spiffy looking 3D interface has been leaked onto the Internet. I have to ask who in the world is leaking this stuff? I can only assume its all internal code as of right now making it virtually impossible for the public to get their hands on it.