Epic Games and ChAIR Entertainment announced that Infinity Blade I and II has earned the company more than $30 million in just one year since the introduction of the original game on iOS devices.

BioWare has explained some of the recent Star Wars: The Old Republic bans and vowed to make adjustments to areas where players have been found to be exploiting. Last week some players were banned from playing because they were looting containers in planet Ilum at too low a level - a move that apparently made many in the SWTOR community upset. Community manager Stephen Reid took to the SWTOR website to explain exactly what had happened and why some players were banned.

According to Electronic Arts over a million gamers worldwide celebrated the holidays in front of their PCs playing BioWare's MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Over the weekend, players spent over 5.5 million hours playing the game, according to EA.

SWTOR has hit a number of other milestones in the first week of release, according to EA:

Sony President of worldwide studios, Shuhei Yoshida, said that Japanese consumers have become more open to Western games. Of course, anyone following the sales and ratings of Skyrim in Japan already knows this. Speaking to the European PlayStation Blog, Yoshida said that Everybody's Golf and Uncharted: Golden Abyss were the most pre-ordered games in the Vita's Japanese line-up. The system launched last week. Yoshida added that the prominence of the US-developed Uncharted in a line-up dominated almost entirely by Japanese games is an indication of a larger trend in the region.

Zynga is telling investors as it pitches for its upcoming initial public offering, that it can and will double its user base - a user base that has been in decline for the last few months due to good-old-fashioned drop-off and Facebook's change in the way it measures user activity. "We could see that doubling," Pincus said at the luncheon at a Boston hotel with potential investors. He did not give a time frame for meeting this target.

Bethesda Softworks’ newest open-world single-player RPG The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has managed to do what no Western game has ever done before: get a perfect score in Japan's most popular and prominent magazine, Famitsu. Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has become the first Western game to receive a perfect 40/40 review score in the Japanese magazine - pulling off what games like with Grand Theft Auto IV, Red Dead Redemption, LA Noire, Modern Warfare 2, Modern Warfare 3, and Call of Duty: Black Ops, Gears of War 3, and FIFA 12 could not do.

Bethesda announced that it is hard at work fixing bugs and glitches associated with various versions of its epic RPG The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. After pages of forum posts and an avalanche of consumer complaints, Bethesda will attempt to fix the issues plaguing PlayStation 3 Skyrim players with a new patch next week - after the Thanksgiving holiday.

"PS3 and 360 updates have been submitted for certification. PC coming too. Current estimate is they will be live the week after Thanksgiving," said Bethesda's Pete Hines.

Bethesda has lost another round in its legal battle with Interplay over the company's Fallout-themed massively multiplayer online game. The Fallout 3 developer was denied a preliminary injunction against Interplay by the courts in September. It appealed the ruling, but yesterday that appeal against the lower court's decision was also rejected.

RAGE may represent the first original IP for id Software since 1996, but the PC version of the game has been marred with so many technical issues that many critics are saying that the game could have used months of additional development and play testing. Those comments are not isolated to the PC version either (long load times are a serious issue with the PS3 version from what I've been told). The game launched earlier this week on various platforms including the PC. Out of the gate PC users noticed some serious issue with the game such as screen tearing and texture issues.

It's game over for Team Bondi, the Australian development studio that helped create LA Noire for Rockstar Games. According to papers filed with the Australian Securities & Investments Commission, Team Bondi will close its doors and its assets will be sold off to pay creditors. Liquidators have been appointed at the company to sell off assets and pay off the company's debts, documents show.

You knew that inevitably in all the sweet talk going around about Diablo III's current beta, that someone would run into a problem with Blizzard's "Always-On" save system. The system requires that players always be connected to the Battle.net server - even in single-player. Also the game saves character data online.

Thanks to the success of its indie game LIMBO, Danish developer Playdead has made enough money to buy itself back from investors. The game was released on Xbox Live Arcade, followed by the PC and PlayStation Network. Limbo's development was funded out-of-pocket by Playdead founders Arnt Jensen and Dino Patti, along with some grant money from the Danish government. Later investors were brought in to get the money needed to get the games across various platforms.

Analyst firm Cowen & Company has raised first-year sales estimates for EA's Battlefield 3 from 8 million to 11 million, after noting vigorous pre-order numbers. The firm said that the game is already benefiting from an extensive marketing campaign (some estimate that EA is spending around $50 million to promote the game prior to launch) ahead of its October release on Xbox 360, Ps3, and PC; and it is seeing pre-orders for Battlefield 3 "comparable" to Call of Duty Black Ops' numbers from last year.

The firm also commented on Star Wars: The Old Republic and the market’s reaction to a planned beta test. Yesterday Electronic Arts began taking pre-orders for the game and announced a beta for sometime in September ahead of its expected holiday release. For some reason this caused shares in EA to take a small hit.

In a recent interview with Gamasutra, Trion senior VP of publishing David Reid said that he knows why Blizzard lost 600,000 subscribers - detailed in Activision's most recent earnings call: because of his company's new MMO Rift. Rift recently hit its one million games sold milestone, and according to Reid, this has a lot to do with the decline in World of Warcraft subscriptions.

"We're really pleased with what we're seeing," said Reid. "And beyond that, it was a pleasure to see that in the latest Activision Blizzard earnings call, they inquired about Rift when Blizzard announced that their subscriber numbers went from 12 million to 11.4 million."

"You can do some math... We know very well where those 600,000 people are," he added.

Video-game industry-related funding and acquisition deals rose 36 percent to a total of 210 in 2010, driven by developments in the online and social network gaming segments. This is according to new IHS Screen Digest research. The research firm said that 123 funding rounds and 87 acquisitions closed in 2010, and that the volume of activity last year was up by more than a third from the 2009's total of 154 events.

Acquisitions doubled last year, with 20 - 24 events occurring every quarter, compared to 49 acquisitions for all of 2009. Total funding for 2010 reached $1.89 billion, up 130 percent from $819 million in 2009. The numbers cover funding and acquisitions activity in all areas of the games market (excluding mobile gaming, which was tracked separately).

Ian Cummings, the man that served for nearly 11 years as the creative director for the popular football game franchise Madden NFL, has left the company. The exodus from his EA Sports gig of 11 years seems to be amicable if you believe his official statement on the matter.

Cummings recounts his climb from the ranks of the QA department all the way to creative director, and thanks fans for their support and enthusiasm over the years. Cummings last game at the studio is Madden NFL 12. Cummings' full statement can be found below:

According to excerpts from a soon-to-be-published Edge interview with former Bizarre Creations creative director Martyn Chudley, commercial manager Sarah Chudley, and former design manager Gareth Wilson, company leaders had the opportunity to buy back Bizarre Creations back from Activision. Now at Sumo Digital, the trio talk about the last days of the studio responsible for Project Gotham Racing and Blur. Activision shut down Bizarre Creations in February of this year after a three-month search for a buyer.

In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser weighed in on whether games are art and if the studio responsible for Grand Theft Auto will ever switch gears and create movies instead of games. The question is a viable one as more details emerge about its latest project LA Noire. Frankly, LA Noire is as close to being a movie production as you can get the way Houser describes it:

"The game, like many of our recent games, has been an absolutely enormous production," he told The Hollywood Reporter. "With 'L.A. Noire,' we employed a massive number of actors in the game – over 400 – along with hair and make-up artists, a great television director, and as the game is set in the golden era of Hollywood, a lot of original costumes, props and other research from the studios themselves."

Ben Cousins, General Manager of EA’s free-to-play branch Easy Studios, says that the current $60 retail model for games is exploitive. In several interviews to promote the launch of Battlefield Play4Free, Cousins is throwing jabs at the traditional retail model and putting a positive spin on free online games. Of course, it makes sense that Cousins would bag on retail, while pointing out the sunshine and rainbows he feels are associated with the free to play model.

"I can’t think of anything more exploitative than gating all of your content behind having to pay someone $60," Cousins tell Rock, Paper, Shotgun. "That's a really harsh business model if you think about it objectively. What we do is enable everyone to play the game, and figure out if they like it. If they don’t like it they can walk away and they don’t lose anything."

BioWare is warning that a number of ongoing scams to get into the Star Wars: The Old Republic beta are underway, and that would-be participants should be cautious. In a post on the game's official web site BioWare warned users to be careful of anyone claiming to "sell beta accounts."

"It has come to our attention that there are multiple individuals and sites claiming to sell testing accounts, 'beta keys', or other offers of access to our Game Testing Program," community manager Allison Berryman said on the SWTOR forums.

"All of these offers are false. BioWare is not issuing invites to Game Testing via any method other than those we outline here on SWTOR.com. We must caution you that these offers are often scams designed to steal your money, credit card information, or identity." BioWare added that selling of beta accounts is strictly prohibited for obvious reasons.

Concerned about the on-going negotiations between the NFL Players Association and the NFL, one analyst offers his worst-case scenarios on the impact of EA Sports' next Madden Football game.

Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter is saying that as much as half of Madden's sales could be lost if a lockout cancels the entire NFL season. Keep in mind that that is a worst-case scenario. Pachter is the only analyst willing to offer a prediction on this.

"If the season is only delayed a week or two and fans aren't alienated, there would be only a very small impact," Pachter told The Hollywood Reporter earlier this week. "If delayed through Thanksgiving, the impact would be far greater."

While that's an extreme prediction and probably not very likely, Electronic Arts COO John Schappert is not taking any chances. He says that the company has planned on "the most conservative assumption, meaning no season."

According to NPD group retail sales data for February, the industry grew by 3 percent in overall sales. But the big story coming out of last month's numbers is that Call of Duty: Black Ops is the best selling game in U.S. history. This is great news for Treyarch, who for many years has stood in the long shadow of Infinity Ward. It finally proves that the company can create a Call of Duty game that is on the same level of quality as anything its sister studio can produce.

Overall, consumers spent around $1.36 billion on games and consoles during the month, up from 1.33 billion in the same period last year. Console sales were up 10 percent during the month, even though spending on games was down five percent compared to last year. Console accessories were up 22 percent over the same period a year ago, mostly due to Kinect.

The recent layoffs at LEGO Universe make a little more sense today as studio owner Gazillion announces that it has sold the rights to the game and the Louisville, Colorado studio developing it. The majority of LEGO Universe development team members, formerly part of Gazillion's NetDevil subsidiary, have been offered employment by the LEGO Group, who will continue game development and operations from the current Louisville, Colorado studio.

"We're excited about the launch of LEGO Universe, and are happy to have the developers officially join the LEGO team," said Jesper Vilstrup, Vice President at the LEGO Group. "This acquisition demonstrates our commitment both to the ongoing success of LEGO Universe and to an overall strategy to expand our brand online."

EA's Visceral Games studio has to be happy right now. According to EA's internal numbers, Dead Space 2 is outselling the original game by a two-to-one margin. Speaking in a conference call to discuss third-quarter results, EA Chief operating officer John Schappert said that nearly two million units of Dead Space 2 have shipped to retail in its first week of release. Of course "shipped" doesn't mean "sold to consumers" but it does mean that retailers are keen to stock the game for consumers to snap up. The original game took around eight months to make it past the one million units sales mark.

Developed by Visceral Games, Dead Space 2 continues to chronicle the horrific journey of Isaac Clarke, an engineer that managed to survive the challenges of the first game. Clarke finds himself in a more open environment called the Sprawl this time - a massive space station attached to one of Saturn's moons.

Responding to an earlier Gamasutra report related to ex-Harmonix shareholders suing parent-company Viacom, the company at the heart of the legal battle fired back with some allegations of its own.

Viacom claims that the allegations in the lawsuit are the result of the poor decisions of shareholders' representatives, and not from any wrongdoing on its part.

"Viacom fulfilled its contractual obligations and our actions were completely appropriate and consistent with the terms of our agreement with Harmonix shareholders and the interests of our shareholders," a representative for Viacom told Gamasutra.

Activision is suing Electronic Arts, adding the company to an existing lawsuit against former Infinity Ward co-founders. The amendment to the lawsuit filed in court this week claims that EA induced Jason West and Vince Zampella to break their contracts with Activision during the development of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. This, the company says, was done so that the duo would be free to establish its new studio, Respawn, and sign with the EA Partners program.

According to the filing obtained by GameSpot, "starting as early as July 30, 2009, Electronic Arts and [West and Zampella]--with full knowledge that the executives were under contract and legally committed to Activision for more than two additional years--conspired to set up an independent company."

Former Harmonix shareholders filed a lawsuit against Viacom last week, accusing the company of trying to find a slick way to get out of paying performance-based bonuses. According to a lengthy Gamasutra report, the group includes Harmonix founders Alex Rigopulos and Eran Egozy, as well as other early funders of the Boston-based developer. The group claims that Viacom is manipulating costs after the initial success of Rock Band to avoid a potentially giant earn-out payment.

While Blizzard was launching its biggest product of the year, behind the scenes it was having some serious problems with a data leak in China, according to a report on VentureBeat. According to that report, citing several news stories from MMOGameSite, Blizzard's release schedule and subscriber numbers were leaked from its China offices, and the general manager of the studio, Ye Weilun, was subsequently fired for it - allegedly.

Angry Birds developer Rovio tells TechCrunch that it expects to make over $1 million in monthly revenues from the free-to-play version of its popular bird-catapulting game.

"By end of year, we project earnings of over $1 million per month with the ad-supported version of Angry Birds," Rovio CEO Peter Vesterbacka told TechCrunch.

The iPhone version of the game costs money, but the Android version is self-published and free. The game makes money off ads it serves up to the user. The Android version of the game has been downloaded over five million times from the Android Market. Vesterbacka also told TechCrunch that the Angry Birds series has an 80 percent retention rate, based on the number of players that return to download updates.

Source: GI.Biz

For nearly a year GamePolitics has been tracking ATCA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).

As we have reported, ACTA deals in large part with copyright issues and is being negotiated in secret by the U.S., Japan, Canada, the EU and other nations. Details of ACTA are largely a mystery to consumers despite the fact that dozens of corporate lobbyists have been clued in to parts of the treaty, including Stevan Mitchell, VP of IP Policy for game publishers trade group the Entertainment Software Association.

Sadly, consumer interests suffered a major blow last week as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Knowledge dropped a federal lawsuit seeking to cast a little sunshine on the ACTA negotiations. The EFF explained that a recent decision by the Obama Administration to claim a national security exemption for the ACTA talks made the lawsuit unwinnable; federal judges have  little leeway to overrule such claims. The move by the Obama White House extends a similar policy put in place by the Bush Administration.

Public Knowledge Deputy Legal Director Sherwin Siy commented on the decision:

Even though we have reluctantly dropped this lawsuit, we will continue to press the U.S. Trade Representative and the Obama Administration on the ACTA issues. The issues are too far-reaching and too important to allow this important agreement to be negotiated behind closed doors.

The worry, of course, is that the United States will emerge from ACTA with a done deal that favors Big IP in the fashion of the consumer-unfriendly DMCA. Hal Halpin, president of the Entertainment Consumers Association, expressed concerns about ACTA earlier this year:

Because ECA supports the balance that must exist between the rights of copyright owners and the right of copyrighted material consumers, we do not think it wise to include any portions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) currently being discussed...    

We are concerned that any DMCA language in ACTA may cause enormous, unforeseen negative implications in US law...

GP: As GamePolitics mentioned above, video game publishers lobbying group the ESA is privy to at least a portion of the secret ACTA negotiations while its industry's customers - video game consumers - are barred from knowing anything at all.

That makes us wonder - will the Video Game Voters Network, which is owned and operated by the ESA, commence a letter-writing campaign on behalf of its gamer-members demanding that the White House pull the curtain back on ACTA?

Somehow we doubt it.

FULL DISCLOSURE DEPT: The Entertainment Consumers Association is the parent company of GamePolitics.

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