First Lady Michelle Obama recently gave a commencement address at Bowie State University encouraging more young African Americans to continue their education. She does so by throwing culture like videogames, television, and music under the bus.

Valve announced six new titles to be greenlighted by the Steam community. The new games that will eventually make their way to Steam thanks to the community's support are Bleed, Game Dev Tycoon, Riot, Stardew Valley, The Legend, and Legends of Eisenwald.

Nintendo has decided to target "Let's Play" videos on YouTube with "content ID match" claims, according to multiple reports this morning. By making these claims it allows Nintendo to either block content or monetize the video. This is not sitting well with Let's Play video makers like Zack Scott whose videos have been targeted by Nintendo.

If the Marketplace Fairness Act that was enthusiastically passed in the Senate earlier this month were to somehow end up becoming the law of the land (through some sort of divine intervention in the House where it will likely stall for lack of support, in my opinion) then 44 percent would cut back on buying products online. This is according to data from a study sponsored by electronic postage software company Endicia and posted on Mashable.

Last week we asked you to guess what Microsoft might name its next console. From five choices, a clear majority of you took the "joke" option, saying that the Next Xbox console would be called "Xbox Steve." Some of you may have thought this option referred to Microsoft's Steve Ballmer, or perhaps you thought it was an homage to the Minecraft character of the same name. Whatever the reason, 40 percent of the votes (169 votes) decided that "Xbox Steve" was the best choice.

Damion Perrine has filed a lawsuit against Sega related to Aliens: Colonial Marines, which he claims Sega represented falsely in its marketing as a far superior game than was delivered to consumers. He claims Sega engaged in "a classic bait-and-switch" with the game and that it also engaged in false advertising, breach of warranties, fraud in the inducement, negligent misrepresentation and committed consumer law violations. He is seeking to have the lawsuit certified as a class action and has sued on behalf of everyone in the United States who bought the game on or before Feb.

In Episode 48 of the Super Podcast Action Committee, Andrew and E. Zachary Knight discuss two polls this week - one about always online consoles and another about having moral objections to gameplay that is so offensive to you that it makes you stop playing. There's also a lot of discussion about the Wii U, the latest Monster Hunter game and a classic game EZK is playing because he found it for cheap used. Download Episode 48 now: SuperPAC Episode 48 (1 hour, 10 minutes) 66.2 MB.

Game Informer has a nifty little video of a recent meeting with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, who they ran into while in Montreal to cover the new Thief game. After bumping in to Wozniak, GI managed to convince him to do an interview. But the interview isn't the most interesting part of the story. Apparently Wozniak holds the high score in Nintendo Power magazine for Tetris on the original Game Boy.

Just how influential and popular is Minecraft creator and Mojang co-founder Markus "Notch" Persson? Well he is apparently the second most influential person in the world right behind Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi in Time Magazine's 2013 Time 100 Poll. Voting for the poll ends today, with the final list to be chosen by Time editors and revealed on April 18.

George R.R. Martin, prolific fantasy author and the creator of the A Song of Ice and Fire book series on which HBO's hit TV series is based, took questions before yesterday's Game of Thrones screening for the new season set to air later this month.

Martin had some pretty interesting things to say about two subjects that get talked about here on GamePolitics: video games and piracy. First, when asked about video games Martin said that he loves them, though his obsessive play sessions tended to get in the way of his work so he has avoided them for quite a long time:

Lynx2Games launches today, promising a new online video game "collaborative consumption service" that lets users rent and own popular titles at "highly discounted prices." Powered by a social e-commerce marketplace called LynxSquare, Lynx2Games uses a share-the-cost system enabling players to team up on purchases of new releases. Lynx2Games lets members rent a new game for three weeks for $19.99 and then ship it to a buyer within the community that wants it for $39.99.

Last week you told you about a one-sided hearing being put on by Congressman Frank Wolf (R-Virginia) today to discuss the recent report created by National Science Foundation's director Subra Suresh and Dr. Brad J. Bushman about violent video games and real world violence like the horrific tragedy that occurred in Newtown late last year.

The deadline for a petition submitted to the White House's "We The People" site to stop the passage of the newest version of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) is March 15, but the petition has already passed the 100,000 signature threshold needed for the White House to recognize it. The petition expresses concerns that citizens and privacy groups have over the privacy implications of the bill sponsored by Reps.

Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose), Ted Poe (R-TX) and Suzan DelBene (D-WA) have introduced bipartisan legislation that seeks to modernize the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA). The changes focus on providing better protections for those who utilize new technologies in the internet age like cloud computing and location-based services. Lofgren was one of a handful of lawmakers that strongly opposed SOPA and PIPA from the very beginning.

In last week's poll we asked you "How important is backwards compatibility to you?" It turns out that it is not an important factor to a majority of our readers - or at least it's not a "deal breaker." 620 people voted in last week's poll and of those 620 votes, only 32 percent (or 196 votes) said that they would not buy a new console if it didn't offer backwards compatibility.

Gaming World Wide has teamed up with Rize Up Gaming to bring their charity efforts to a community that believes in creating a positive social atmosphere for gamers of all stripes.

While the "six strikes" anti-piracy program agreed upon by Internet service providers and intellectually property owners went into effect this week, service providers and the entertainment industry have not been so keen on sharing what the ramifications are if users are accused of engaging in copyright infringement online. Most ISPs have claimed that six strikes is simply a program to educate consumers on the evils of illegally downloading and sharing copyrighted materials and that it has very little to do with punishing individuals.

Earlier this week, we reported on a new Harris Poll that said, among other things, that 58% of 2,278 U.S adults (ages 18+) think that there's a correlation between playing violent games and violent behavior in teenagers.  Many of us were wondering exactly how the question that prompted that response was phrased.

Organizers of QuakeCon, the annual fan gathering dedicated to all things Quake and id Software related is set to take place this year August 1 - 4 at the Hilton Anatole Hotel in the beautiful city of Dallas, Texas. Thanks to id Software and Bethesda Softworks (both owned by Zenimax, for the record) the event is free to all, though if you want a place to stay you'd better book a room early.

GamesBeat seems to have secured the exclusive on a new poll from national polling outfit Harris Poll about video games. The poll, which questioned 2,278 U.S. adults found that nearly three in five adult Americans - or 58 percent - think that video games contribute to violent behavior in teenagers.

Earlier in the week reported on a petition over at WhiteHouse.gov asking the administration to direct the Librarian of Congress to rescind the October 2012 decision that removed unlocking mobile phones (commonly referred to as jailbreaking) as an exception to the DMCA. The petition went on to ask the White House - if it could not compel the Librarian of Congress to change that decision - to champion a bill that makes unlocking phones permanently legal.

PocketGamer is reporting that EA-owned studio Firemint has given in to pressure by consumers and removed "freemium features" to its latest game Real Racing 3. Earlier this week developer Firemint announced that the game would be available as part of a soft launch in some territories February 28.

CCP Games has informed us that the EVE Fanfest 2013 event to celebrate all things related to its popular space MMO EVE Online sold out last week. The event held once a year in Reykjavik, Iceland will see about 1,400 attendees - about 50 percent more than last year's event. The Fanfest offers attendees three days of EVE Online and CCP-related activities that include panels, local Icelandic excursions, presentations from the game's developers, PvP tournaments, a developer-lead pub crawl, game reveals, and the general joys of camaraderie.

Rayman creator Michel Ancel and staff members from Ubisoft Montpellier have joined fans in protesting the delayed release of Rayman Legends on the Wii U in order to simultaneously release the former Wii U exclusive on the PS3 and Xbox 360. Apparently the Wii U version is ready to go, but parent company Ubisoft wants to keep it locked down until the other versions of the game are done. Our pal Andrew Eisen shared his thoughts on that yesterday in this amusing video...

In case you didn't get the memo, this week is apparently Gamer Safety Week, according to the Merchant Risk Council's Gamer Safety Alliance. This week marks the second annual awareness campaign to draw attention to gaming account safety with the hope of teaching the community about the ramifications of having their online identity compromised (hint: it's real bad).

Former THQ executive vice president of core games Danny Bilson laments the dismantling and sale of THQ and its various properties and studios. Bilson worked for more than four years at the publisher before being replaced by former Naughty Dog co-founder Jason Rubin When asked by Polygon for his reaction to all the news surrounding the auctioning off of THQ's assets, Bilson offered the following:

Diablo III Director and longtime Blizzard developer Jay Wilson announced via a Battle.net forum thread that he would be moving on to another project and leaving his post for the popular online action RPG. But what was supposed to be a moment of reflection and sincerity quickly turned into a frenzy against Wilson for all of the problems the game has had since launch.

On January 18, 2012 something amazing happened: the Internet community, advocacy groups, internet personalities, popular websites, and even some brave politicians banded together to send a message to lawmakers and special interests that backed the poorly crafted SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act) legislation.

While it might be funny that Anonymous now has a petition up on the official website for the White House, it is doubtful at the Obama Administration finds it all that humorous. The loose-knit Internet hacking collective has taken some time out of its busy schedule of attacking various government agencies and other organizations it hates to launch a petition asking the Administration to make DDoS attacks a form of protected speech under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

While Hollywood talks about the billions of dollars in lost revenue it loses from piracy it seems that its employees have a different philosophy. According to this TorrentFreak report - using data from BitTorrent monitoring company Scaneye - employees of major studios love downloading movies, TV shows and video games.