Build A Five Hundred Dollar Gaming PC

Build a $500 PC that plays modern PC games at acceptable frame rates

read more | digg story

Spore, Mass Effect for PC to Require Periodic Online Validation

In the BioWare forums, technical producer Derek French stated that the PC versions of Mass Effect and Spore are going to use SecuROM copy protection that requires online validation on install and validation every ten days for the game to keep working.

It's a sad state of affairs when companies resort to draconian DRM to try and protect their games. All this is going to do is upset people, and cause tech support problems. Everyone knows that five minutes after the game is out it's going to get cracked. So in the end all they will have done is make it harder for paying customers to use their product. I think the guys at Penny Arcade said it best with their latest comic.

Penny Arcade! - Desperate Measures

New Eve Online expansion renders Windows XP unusable

This is most definitely NOT the way to roll out a new expansion for a game. How can something so major get past the testers to live? Talk about poor QA.

CCP Games recently released an expansion for their MMORPG Eve Online containing new premium graphics content. However, the installer was programmed to delete C:/boot.ini, making it impossible to reboot without manually repairing your Windows XP installation.Vista is unaffected.

read more | digg story

Blizzard and Activison Merge

I'm kinda torn on this issue. I don't really play Wow, but I'm really looking forward to Starcraft 2. The merged name is craptacular. Activision Blizzard? Come on...

PC World has an interesting take on what's happening. They do make a good case for how it "could" be good. I'm hoping Blizzard gets to keep all the people who make their games great. I guess only time will tell.

Technorati Tags: blizzard, gaming, activision, merger