Amazon,
Direct2Drive,
GameStop, and
Steam (and presumably other e-tailers and retailers) are now offering pre-purchases of a
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Limited Edition, which offers the six perks in the military shooter sequel announced
last October. These are an Up-armor package mounted on all vehicle types, additional weapon packages for the driver of all armored vehicles, a Vehicle Motion Sensor, a Tracer Dart Pistol, an M1A1 Sub-machine Gun, and the M1911 Pistol. A FAQ
released following the
announcement of the LE explained that these perks are early access to multiplayer upgrades, which must be unlocked by owners of the vanilla edition. The two editions are the same price, so this is meant as a pre-purchase incentive. There is also an "online disclaimer" on the
Steam page for the LE with two notes we haven't seen before, saying online play will require an account with ea.com, and that online access to the game is "non transferrable." Here's word, apologies for the shouting:
ACCEPTANCE OF END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT REQUIRED TO PLAY. ACCESS TO ONLINE FEATURES AND/OR SERVICES REQUIRES AN EA ACCOUNT AND REGISTRATION WITH THE ENCLOSED SERIAL CODE. REGISTRATION FOR ONLINE FEATURES IS LIMITED TO ONE EA ACCOUNT PER SERIAL CODE AND IS NON-TRANSFERABLE. EA ONLINE TERMS & CONDITIONS CAN BE FOUND AT www.ea.com. YOU MUST BE 13+ TO REGISTER FOR AN EA ACCOUNT. EA MAY RETIRE ONLINE FEATURES AFTER 30 DAYS NOTICE POSTED ON www.ea.com.
A
post to the Fallen Earth Forums reveals a promotion offering ten days of free access to former subscribers to FALLEN EARTH LLC's post-apocalyptic MMORPG. There's also a
subsequent post explaining how to convert your "10 Day Callback Trial" to a full subscription. Here's word on the plan:
We’ve made amazing game enhancements in the past few months and we wanted to call back several of the folks that haven’t had a chance to see these improvements. In an email promotion today, we extended the offer of ten free days of gameplay to some past subscribers and testers so they could experience the changes firsthand.
The promotion was sent to account holders that met one of the following criteria:
• Those who had not had access to the game in the past 60 days
• Those who had access but had not logged in to the game in the past 60 days
We are excited to show off what we’ve accomplished and hope that you’ll join us in welcoming these fans back to the Apocalypse.
Another new automatic
Steam update is now available for
Zero Gear, the kart racing/combat game. A few bugs are fixed and the new version adds additional controller options, including analog controller support.
The
Steam client has had a couple of updates in the past few days.
One automatic patch fixes a couple of bugs, one of which could cause stats and achievements to be reset.
The second auto-update fixes an issue preventing preloading for
Mass Effect 2.
Gamasutra has word that the NPD has announced
The Sims 3 as the top selling PC game for 2009, saying that after selling 1.4 million units in its first week, the game sold 3.7 million copies by the end of June. They don't offer sales figures for the year, but say this is the "sixth time this decade that a Sims game was able to top annual PC charts."
Voodoo Extreme points out some discrepancies with U.S./E.U. exchange rates on Steam which seem unfair to European customers, and vary from title to title. Here's an example showing oddities between the cost in dollars, pounds, and euros for Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Limited Edition and Dragon Age Origins - Awakening:
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Limited Edition: $49.99 / €49.99 / £34.99
Real World: $50 = €35 / $50 = £31 / €50 = £43
Dragon Age Origins - Awakening: $39.99 / €29.99 / £19.99
Real World: $40 = €28 / $40 = £24 / €30 = £26
A3P (Acquire, Attack, Asplode, Pwn!) has a recently released version 0.5 of this game that looks to combine the action of a third-person shooter with the strategery of an RTS game. The game is working towards a version 1.0 they hope to release in the second quarter of this year. Thanks
Ant via
LinuxGames.
American In China: McGee On Making It Work In Shanghai on Gamasutra is an interview with American McGee, the expatriate American who now plies his game development trade in China. American explains the error of the old saying about the twain never meeting between east and west, since he has been twaining away for years now, going into some detail on how he works with developers from both sides of the world. Other topics include piracy, innovation, and his brief stint at EA where he worked on Michael Crichton's
Timeline: "That game subsequently went out and sold one copy, literally. It's called Timeline. They did a really bad movie based on it as well."
The Escapist - I Have Seen The Future, And it is Annoying. Thanks Joker961.
This was the horror I forsaw last year, but now I can see that no matter how pessimistic and cynical I get, the games industry is always one step ahead of me. While having lots of programs running at once is a terrible prospect, it is nothing compared to the nightmare of having multiple programs all connected to a single game. This Christmas I picked up Grand Theft Auto IV through Steam (in my defense: I knew the PC version was a train wreck, but it was super, super cheap) and I got a glimpse of the coming digital delivery spamocalypse. GTA IV ran under Games for Windows Live. But I don't know why, because as far as I could tell it didn't use any GFWL features. For multiplayer, it used the Rockstar Social Club. And all of this ran under Steam. Steam, GFWL, and Rockstar Social Club all have their own unique login systems, which means the game basically wanted three sets of login credentials. (On the other hand, only the Steam one is mandatory. On the other other hand, Social Club is a hateful, pestering bastard.)
Bitmob - The Industry is Changing, and I'm Scared.
One of the worst feelings a person can have, in my personal opinion, is that of helplessness. Being completely powerless over something and seeing absolutely no way to change it. It feels awful, and because of that, I will try my hardest to avoid experiencing it as much as I can. Sometimes though, I just can not avoid it, and recently I have had to come to terms with it and accept that I am powerless over the direction the gaming industry is taking. I realized that I must really love this industry to get so worked up about it. It is completely true, I really do love it. So you can understand how hard it has been to watch something you love turn it's back on you. Some may scoff at this, but watching this industry alienate the Hardcore Gamers in favor of Casual Gamers is tearing me apart, and I need to vent on the subject. Here is my plea to the industry.
Pach-Attack on GameTrailers.com.
A video report where industry analyst Michael Pachter names the winners and losers in 2009 in the game industry, naming all the big stories he and other analysts failed to predict accurately in advance.
We hit the homeland of Brooklyn yesterday for some of the always excellent food at Jay and Lloyd's Deli. As for today, I'm looking forward to some tackle football as I attempt to slowly digest a mountain of pastrami.
Twitter 
