This Week in Gaming - December 13-19th
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19 Dec 2011, 19:56
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News
Each week 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. Next Monday will be Boxing Day so I doubt I'll be able to write, so until then, Merry Christmas!
Gaming News
The most important piece of gaming news this week is likely to affect us all. SOPA, also known as the Stop Online Piracy Act. If you haven't heard anything about it then check back here on Crossfire.nu tomorrow as I'll be writing a column explaining all. A possible outcome of this bill passing would be that websites that we use would be shut down. You can say goodbye to megaupload, youporn and thepiratebay.
TotalBiscuit has made a YouTube video explaining it which you can see here. The short story here is that a number of large American corporations including Sony, EA, UFC, NFL, NBA, Universal and 350+ more are supporting a bill which:Of course, you will be wondering how this affects you or why you should care at all, you're not American, right? Well the problem is that all of our major international entertainment industries are American ... the games we play, the music we listen to, the porn we watch ... It's all in jeopardy. I'm honestly not being sensationalist in writing this. This isn't exaggeration for exaggeration's sake, this bill is BAD NEWS for anyone who regularly uses the internet. Simple as that. Watch TotalBiscuit's video, he explains it better than I do.
If that news has depressed you (which it should), then this will cheer you up: A bearded Dragon playing Ant Smasher.
Team Fortress 2 has one of the most dedicated playerbases of any game out there at the moment. The 'Hat Economy' of the game has recently been valued at $50 million! If you're unfamiliar with Team Fortress 2 Hats, they are vanity items which are used to make your character look awesome. They are acquired by buying games or unlocking crates, which are unlocked with keys, which can be acquired for free by dropping 18 weapons. Based on the number of players doing certain things in order to acquire hats, the economist determines that $1.54 million is injected (in theory) into this virtual economy every day. As the article states, this isn't $50 million that Valve has floating around, but rather this is an economists valuation of the market itself. eSports
As Christmas approaches and the international gaming LAN season draws to a close, there are few tournaments remaining. One such is the IEM VI Kiev: Qualifiers. The LAN itself will take place in 
Kiev in January, but the European qualifiers are being held online at the moment. In the CounterStrike competition, the IEM VI Kiev European Stage 3 qualifier finished with 
Moscow Five, 
Lions swe, SK Gaming, fnatic and 
WinFakt having qualified. WCG Champions 
ESC Gaming and reigning IEM V World Champions Na'Vi both failed to reach the top 5.Notable Releases
The Steam Holiday Sale 2011 begins today! (As pointed out by
duumed) Frankly speaking, the deals are amazing. There are new deals every day and I wish I had more money and more time. Max Payne & Max Payne 2 are £1.49 each. (Best games ever!!) There are a series of achievements listed each day as part of a Steam Christmas competition and if you complete all achievements every day then you have a chance of winning the grand prize, which apparently is every single Steam game unlocked on your account!For all the latest gaming news check out crossfire.nu - a gaming community.
That SOPA thing can't pass for god's sake!!
Nice read as usual tho
LoL groups annouced
Group A:
-AbsoluteLegends
-White Lotus
-Team SoloMid
-Goose
Group B:
-aAa
-iG
-Team Dignitas
-Moscow Five
IEM Kiev 2012
» Date: 19th - 22nd January 2012
» Where: Kiev, CyberSport Arena
» Prize: $32,000
the crossfire of LoL :)
:)
got portal 2 for £5 also
i really appreciate these 'this week in gaming' posts btw, saves me browsing sites like IGN, gamespot etc. which i'm not as familiar with
edit: bearded dragon video is awesome
It's just about controlling the market and private media corporations having the power to take down any site that could even potentially host infringing material, including YouTube, Facebook, Megaupload (which already was taken down for a short period), Imageshack and so forth, without a warning or explanation.
And concerning the case of Megaupload, several artists independently made a song about Megaupload and how awesome they think it is, and Universal requested it be taken down for "copyright infringement" when they didn't even have any rights to the song. And all of this was allowed by the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act), which is a far lesser version of SOPA/PIPA.
e: They should rather listen to for example Joss Stone ( if it comes to music )
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCkX0KcNwrI
Of course it might *eventually* be affected if SOPA being passed causes similar laws to be passed in different countries.