Electronic Arts has decided to do away with its controversial online pass system for used games, the company confirmed with GamesBeat last night.

"Yes, we’re discontinuing Online Pass," EA senior director of corporate communications John Reseburg confirmed to GamesBeat in an e-mail. "None of our new EA titles will include that feature."

A hacking group is claiming that it has managed to circumvent the copy protection on Nintendo's Wii U. Nintendo is not commenting on the story publicly. According to the group who seems to have no formal group name, they were able to bypass the Wii U's copy protection and play pirated games via USB media. The team claims that it has "completely reversed the Wii U drive authentication, disk encryption, file system, and everything else needed for this next generation key."

Developer Greenheart Games has released a "cracked version" of its $8 PC and Mac title Game Dev Tycoon on torrents that's specifically for pirates. The cracked version of the game causes game development studios in the sim go bankrupt due to rampant in-game piracy. Greenheart claims that the pirated version of the game made up 93 percent of its player base at launch, and caused an outburst from pirates complaining about their in-game titles failing through (ironically) piracy.

The Witcher series developers CD Projekt RED say that the digital rights management schemes are the "worst thing" in the video game industry these days and that it will never include such schemes in its games.

Ubisoft Montreal CEO Yannis Mallat claims that gamers are ready to embrace a world where your game and console are always online - particularly with the upcoming next-gen consoles from Sony and Nintendo.

According to this Gameranx report some hackers in Russia are already playing Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, despite the fact that it isn't quite out yet. Apparently a group of Russian hackers have discovered an exploit in Ubisoft's uPlay digital distribution service that allows them to download the game without paying for it.

The Catnip Bundle has launched over at Bundle Stars offering PC players 10 instantly downloadable PC games for whatever price they want. The highlighted title in the Catnip Bundle is Pushcat, an arcade game from indie studio Zut Games. Other titles include Metal Drift, Obulis, Avencast: Rise of the Mage, Post Mortem, Wasteland Angel, Chains, Nikopol, and two mystery titles.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is shining a spotlight on a proposal currently before the World Wide Web Consortium's HTML5 Working Group to put digital rights management (DRM) into the next generation of core Web standards. The proposal in questions is called Encrypted Media Extensions, or EME. The EFF says that adopting EME into core standards would be a "calamitous development."

Putting the technical specifications of the proposal aside, why does the EFF think that certain parties are pushing this EME proposal? Here's their analysis on that:

In a recent blog post Super Meat Boy developer Tommy Refenes argues that using DRM to keep games from being pirated and general apathy ultimately hurts developers. He also notes that applying loss prevention techniques to digital products doesn't work in the space.

As much as EA and Maxis want to smooth things over with fans and make them happy, this latest blog post from Maxis General Manager Lucy Bradshaw isn't being received very well, if you believe the comments following the article.

A new SimCity mod detailed in a YouTube video and later explained in-depth on a Reddit thread reveals that it is possible to play SimCity offline indefinitely with a few important caveats. Despite those caveats the mod shows that the game can easily be transitioned from an "always connected" game to an offline single player game, despite what both EA and Maxis have said. According to modder UKAzzer he was able to do this with a little bit of work and by enabling the game's secret debug mode. This allowed him to turn off the disconnection timer limit.

EA Maxis General Manager Lucy Bradshaw took to EA's blog for three updates over the weekend to talk about the progress the company has made in making SimCity a bit more stable for players. In her first update on March 8 Bradshaw said that they had increased server capacity by 120 percent and that it had proven to help more people get in and play the game. Bradshaw also said that the number of "disrupted experiences" had dropped by roughly 80 percent."

Andrew Eisen plays a little game called Let's Try to Connect to SimCity and Play the Game. It's a game that was sweeping the nation this week, but unlike the hula-hoop or baseball, this week's American pastime was not that much fun. Check out Andrew's reenactment of what a typical SimCity player probably went through this week.

On this week's show, hosts Andrew Eisen and E. Zachary Knight discuss the first Tropes vs. Women video, "Bronies" and if rights holders should be a little kinder to fan projects, and the nightmarish launch of SimCity this week. Download Episode 44 now: SuperPAC Episode 44 (1 hour, 6 minutes) 60.4 MB.

Well, the good news is that EA's official Twitter for its digital distribution service Origin has confirmed that you will not be banned if you ask for a refund on your purchase of SimCity in light of the fact that you probably can't play it.

The bad news is that you more than likely ain't getting that refund.

It's been a pretty rough day for both customers who bought SimCity and the developers trying everything under the sun to get it working at full capacity. While EA has been trying to solve the problem and get gamers playing the game, some fans have been very vocal about how the game's DRM has broken it beyond repair.

Last night SimCity Senior Producer Kip Katsarelis posted a statement on the EA forums addressing the ongoing issues with the game and players' complaints that servers are continually inaccessible.

In a cheeky promotion to support its SimCity back catalog title, Good Old Games takes a slight dig at the problems associated with the new SimCity game during its launch. In a tweet offering an alternative to the trials and tribulations of connecting to EA servers, GOG says that it has a SimCity game that you won't have any trouble playing.

As is often the case with games that rely heavily on "always online" schemes, EA's SimCity had a bit of trouble today as it officially launched servers for the latest entry in the popular city building simulation. EA's biggest problem seems to be related to its digital distribution platform Origin, which has struggled to keep up with fans' demand to buy and play the game on launch day. Users have encountered a number of problems today including trouble downloading their digitally purchased copies and problems with unlocking physical copies of the game.

Diablo 3 for the PS3 and PS4 will not feature cross-platform play but it will include an offline mode for PS3 and PS4 players. PC players cannot play the game without being connected to Battle.net - even when playing single-player. The clarification on cross-platform play was made by the game's community manager Vaeflare on the Battle.net forums.

In an interview with MCV Ubisoft’s worldwide Uplay director Stephanie Perotti acknowledges that the company doesn't have the best relationship with the PC gaming community because of past issues (namely its strong support for "always on DRM" in several of its major PC titles), but that the company is listening to the feedback and reacting accordingly - most notably getting rid of its much-hated DRM-scheme.

The PlayStation 4 will not require an internet connection, though it is likely that if you want to take advantage of some of its core features and frequent updates you'll need a connection at some point. According to Eurogamer Sony says that, while you may want to keep your console connected to the internet to take advantage of the system's new features, it is not a requirement.

It's not an evil alliance, but some (those that don't like Uplay and Origin) might view it that way. It looks like Uplay and Origin are doing a little foreign exchange action, with Ubisoft's digital distribution platform getting select EA titles and EA's digital distribution platform getting games from Ubisoft. Ubisoft's Uplay service is also offering games from other third-party publishers including Warner Bros., Focus Home Interactive, Freebird Games, Paradox Interactive, Telltale Games and more.

This week hosts Andrew Eisen and E. Zachary Knight talk about fresh Xbox 720 rumors, new game bills in America, the releases cycle of the Ouya, and last week's GamePolitics Poll. All this and more awaits in Episode 40. Download it now: SuperPAC Episode 40 (1 hour) 55.5 MB.

Mike Blank, EA's Vice President, Production, Design, and Engineering for Origin, announced on EA's Blog the official launch of the Mac OS X client for its digital distribution platform. The OS X version of Origin offers dual-platform play for select EA games (that are available on both PC and Mac) for those gamers that use both platforms.

If you follow me on Twitter, you're probably aware that I can't stand Activision's Skylanders games or Disney's upcoming Disney Infinity.  Both games require you to buy a bunch of figurines to unlock stuff in the game you already paid full price for.  This is an extension of that "on-disc DLC" stuff that many have been