GameStop reported sales of $3.68 billion for the forth-quarter of 2013, a 3.4 percent increase over the $3.56 billion the company reported in the same period a year ago. It comes as no surprise that the retailer attributed the increase in sales to the launches of Sony's PlayStation 4 and Microsoft's Xbox One in November of last year.

Soon gamers will be able to share and gift games on Xbox One just like they can on Steam, according to what Microsoft Studios head Phil Spencer told GameSpot in a recent interview. Speaking to the publication during GDC last week in San Francisco, Spencer said that Microsoft believes in a future where digital content is king.

Oddworld Inhabitants co-founder Lorne Lanning isn't interested in working with big publishers like Electronic Arts now or ever again, and in an interview with VG247 to discuss his latest game (Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty), he uses some colorful language to express his feelings on the matter.

Curve Studios design director Jonathan "Bidds" Biddle has found himself in the spotlight today after tweeting that Valve will be making dramatic changes to its Steam Greenlight program. Biddle said on Twitter that the system, which lets users cast a "Yes" or "No" votes on pitches for potential products to be listed on Steam, will be gone by this time next year.

We met with Valve at GDC, and they say Greenlight will be gone within 12 months. They'll still offer curated space, but otherwise be open.

Sony says that it is considering allowing software to be "pre-loaded" on to its PlayStation 4 console. Speaking to Polygon, a Sony rep. told the publication that the company is aware that consumers want this feature.

Interested in picking up the Hacker series for super cheap?

Head on over to Bundle Stars sometime in the next 27 days and you'll be able to pick up Hacker Evolution, Hacker Evolution: Untold, Hacker Evolution Duality and all the DLC for $2.99.

A Steam account is required to enjoy the games.  All games run on Windows but Hacker Evolution Duality and its DLC also runs on Mac and Linux.  

Coming off the heels of discontinuing its plans for regional pricing (and apologizing for it to the community) GOG.com has announced that it will make a strong push towards supporting the Linux operations system.

A couple weeks ago, Good Old Games announced that it would be instituting regional pricing (some regions would pay more or less for the same title than other regions) for titles it otherwise wouldn't be able to make available on its digital distribution platform.

The decision was not popular.

GOG.com has made a very public apology for trying to institute regional pricing, calling it a big mistake and saying that it will find ways - even if it costs the company money out of its own pocket - to make sure that everyone in every region pays the same amount of money for its catalog of DRM-free PC, Mac, and Linux games.

Blizzard Entertainment announced that World of Warcraft level 90 character boosts are now available to purchase from inside the MMO's store, along with pre-orders for its next expansion Warlords of Draenor.

Uncovered by a user on Reddit, a page from Valve's private Steamworks community shows that the company will allow developers to set their own sales. In the past Valve and a developer would have to work together in order to set up a sale for a game.

According to a new report from NPD Group called "Exploring Digital Gaming," around 16 percent of Americans use digital distribution exclusively, ignoring traditional disc-based games altogether.

Electronic Arts COO Peter Moore says that his company's digital revenue will overtake its physical disc sales in two years. Moore made the comments during a conversation with Entertainment Software Association president Mike Gallagher at the Digital Entertainment World conference in Los Angeles, as reported on by Games Industry International.

GOG.com is celebrating Valentine's Day with a sale and a special gift to gamers to show how much they love us. The gift is a free copy of Dungeon Keeper Gold (which includes the Deeper Dungeons expansion pack), which you can simply grab by visiting gog.com and logging in to your account (yes you'll need to have a GOG.com account to get it). In addition to the free game (courtesy of EA), you can also get the sequel, Dungeon Keeper 2, for the wonderful rock-bottom price of $1.49 in GOG.com's Valentine's Day sale.

Sony says that around 48 percent of the games bought by PS Vita customers are sold online. Speaking at a behind-closed-doors meeting in California, a representative for the company told IGN that digital games sales currently account for 48 percent of the PS Vita’s total software sales.

According to the web site for law firm Osborne Clarke, the results of the German court case against Valve for not allowing Steam accounts to be transferred or the ability to sell pre-owned Steam games are in.

GOG.com says that its customers helped raise $1.9 million for various charities in 2013. The DRM-free digital marketplace for classic and new PC games said that customers raised this money mostly through its first ever online charity event carried out in November 2013. The money is being split up between several charities including WWF, Worldbuilders, and Gaming for Good.

If you live in Japan you already know that the government taxes games (and other physical goods) with a consumption tax that are imported from outside the country, but that tax will soon be applied to digital purchases as well, according to this Kotaku report.

The hacking group known as "DERP" has reportedly struck again, claiming responsibility for taking down EA's digital distribution platform Origin yesterday.

The hacker organization claimed responsibility for the attack in posts via Twitter.

"We've directed the Gaben Laser Beam @ the EA login servers. Origin #offline."

Nintendo has apologized for outages over the Christmas holiday period on its eShop. The company said that these outages were mostly due to high volumes of traffic. As a result of these problems Nintendo also said that it was forced to delay the Pokémon Bank and Poké Transporter apps, which were originally due to go live on December 27.

Wired UK (by way of sister publication Ars Technica) offers an interesting and lengthy discussion with GOG.com managing director Guillaume Rambourg about digital rights management. Rambourg talks about DRM, anti-sales, and a whole lot more.

Rambourg starts out with GOG.com's origin story and how high levels of piracy in its home country of Poland inspired the founders to create a storefront that worried very little about DRM and put their focus instead on creating value that would convert those pirates into paying customers. Here's an excerpt:

GOG.com has launched its "2013 DRM-Free Winter Sale, giving consumers deep discounts on many of the games in its DRM-free catalog, offering special pricing in three different random categories and giving away all of its Fallout games for FREE for the next 48 hours.

While many will head over to the site to get Fallout, Fallout 2, and Fallout Tactics for free, there are plenty of decent deals on old and new games in the GOG.com worth checking out.

I miss video game cartridges.

They were sturdy and more fun to handle.  No need to worry about fingerprints or gingerly placing them in a tray or slot.  Just jam those suckers in your console and away you go!  Heck, you could dropkick those suckers across the room if you didn't mind getting grounded.

The amount of space is limited only by cost.  You could have battery backups and even custom chips (remember the Super NES's FX chip?).  They were faster too!  No installing and rarely any loading!

Only a few hours after it was revealed that cloud-based file-sharing destination Hotfile has agreed to pay $80 million to the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) as part of a settlement for a trial set to begin next week, the site went offline. Not only did the site go offline, but it took all of the user content being stored on its servers with it. Users who stored legal personal and business-related documents are now left in much the same situation that Megaupload users were left in, but this time it can't be blamed on anyone except the service provider.

Digital game store ShinyLoot will be hosting a massive Black Friday sale where over one hundred games in its catalog will be discounted to $1 each. The sale will include indie games from developer partners, DRM-free including such titles as The Oil Blue, Children of the Nile, Aztaka, The Cat Lady, Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land, Creeper World, Bridge Construction Set and Hinterland. The sale will begin on Friday, Nov. 29 at midnight CST, and will run until Monday Dec. 2 until Midnight CST.

Research firm NPD Group has released a new report called Q3 2013 Games Market Dynamics: U.S., which details the spending habits of video game consumers in the United States during the third quarter of this year. The report notes that $3.45 billion was spent on games in Q3 2013. Around $1.30 billion of that total was spent on physical game software, while $1.75 billion was spent on digital content (digital purchases, DLC, subscriptions, social, and mobile games), $436 million went towards used games and game rentals.

Research firm IHS forecasts is suggesting that 34 percent of the money consumers spend on software for Xbox One and PlayStation 4 will be done in the digital space by 2017.

"A key driver for this digital transition will be publisher ambition to release most games digitally at the same time as boxed versions at retail outlets," said the report prepared by Piers Harding-Rolls, head of games.

On this week's show, hosts Andrew Eisen and E. Zachary Knight talk about the latest GamePolitics poll, Dark Matter being released on Steam and GOG and then being pulled, the TotalBiscuit YouTube controversy, and Sony being upset over pics of a nude character model from Beyond: Two Souls. Download Episode 75 now: SuperPAC Episode 75 (1 hour, 10 minutes) 81.1 MB.

Earlier this week it came to light that the latest Pokémon games contained a rare save bug at a certain location in the game that locked the game down. Today Nintendo released a title update for Pokémon X and Y that fixes the bug and makes the game safe to play again. The software update is now available to download from the 3DS eShop. All you have to do is boot up the game, go to the game updates menu and download the update you see listed.

Did you think Humble Bundle had closed up shop?  We're not sure why you would think that but the Pay-What-You-Want bundle dealer is back with a new bundle featuring four games: Ticket to Ride (plus the USA 1910 DLC), Greed Corp, Incredipede and Anodyne.  Also included are the soundtracks for Ticket to Ride, Greed Corp, and Anodyne (plus a remix album).