This Week in Gaming - November 22-28th

Each Monday I plan to cover the past week's latest news surrounding the world of gaming, including major tournament results, headline gaming news & headlines and notable games releases and updates.

Gaming News

Ubisoft recently earned the ire of PC gamers by first imposing heavy DRM on all of their customers and now they've announced that they won't be releasing upcoming title I Am Alive on the PC because of piracy concerns. Wow. Ubisoft evidently do not understand the PC market as it has been their ridiculous piracy anti-measures such as 'always-on internet connection required' has put off even their most loyal customers. However, one company that does understand the PC market is Valve. Co-founder and managing director, Gabe Newell, recently stated that there is a general misconception about piracy. That the problem lies within the delivery service and availability.

Quote by Gabe Newell

For example, if a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate’s service is more valuable.

It's another example of a large publisher being so badly out of date with the modern PC audience and another example of how well Valve knows the truth. Ubisoft even went on to state that "95% of people will pirate our game", as a reason behind not releasing new games for the PC platform. It's safe to say that Ubisoft could learn a lot from the success of Valve and their Steam service.

As I reported last week, EA were back in the news for all the wrong reasons, again, as they were being taken to court over broken promises related to Battlefield 3. Not wanting the public humiliation that would come hand-in-hand with the lawsuit, EA have backtracked and announced that they will indeed give BF3 PS3 players Battlefield 1943 as promised. In their official statement, EA stated "There have been some misunderstandings around Battlefield 1943 and Battlefield 3. To address this we are making Battlefield 1943 available free of charge to owners of Battlefield 3 on the PS3 beginning this month." While an apology was missing, it's good to see that EA is at least doing the right thing, for once.

eSports

The final instalment of this year's DreamHack season was played out over the weekend as DreamHack Winter 2011 provided us with some outstanding match-ups in the best games. In the flagship tournaments, Team Liquid's HerO won his first major by defeating PuMa in the Grand Final which was watched by almost 100k viewers. In CounterStike 1.6, fnatic beat fellow Swedes Lions swe to win the DreamHack title in their organisation's CS history. fnatic made it 2 tournaments wins as their Heroes of Newerth team also took home the Gold.
Cypher won his third consecutive Quake Live DreamHack tournament, sweeping rapha 3:0 in the final. Last but not least, fnatic were denied a third Gold pocal of the event as Wild Honey Badgers won the Dota 2 tournament in a tightly fought contest.

Notable Releases

Rounding out the glorious gaming month of November is The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Joining so many other titles this month, Zelda is scoring a whopping 94/100 on MetaCritic. The Nintendo Wii exclusive once again has you playing as our hero, Link, trying to save the world. The story is, as always, compelling and appealing; the characters are strong and familiar and the graphics are surprisingly good for the limited capacity of the Wii. If the Zelda series holds a special place in your heart then you have no reason to not give the latest instalment a thorough play-through.

Saints Row the Third was released last week and has reaffirmed itself as the sandbox title of this generation. You take to streets of the fictional city of Steelport and cause utter mayhem in perhaps the wackiest game ever seen. noodle summed it up best when he said "Saints Row is basically the game that GTA wishes it was. GTA tries to be too serious these days when most players want to sandbox and cause mayhem in stupid suits with stupid weapons." Saints Row the Third is currently scoring 85/100 on MetaCritic but there is 15% extra fun to be had here, so make sure you don't miss it!

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