Electronic Arts announced this morning that its "On The House" program will feature BioWare's popular role-playing game Dragon Age: Origins for the month of October. To get the game for free, all you need to do is have an Origin account and the Origin client installed. If you have those things already, you can download the game for free from this link.

A new law in the United Kingdom makes it legal for citizens to make backups of their legally purchased CDs, MP3s, DVDs, Blu-rays and e-books. Consumers can store these backup copies on home PCs or in the cloud, according to the BBC. Obviously it is still illegal to share these backup copies with friends, family, or with the Internet community at large. Prior to this change in the law, it was illegal to rip CDs locally or for use with iTunes.

The Witcher series developer CD Projekt is reiterating its long-held position on the use of digital rights management software in its games. In a new interview with IGN discussing DRM and DLC related to its upcoming RPG sequel The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, CD Projekt Red 's Michal Platkow-Gilewski said it is as vehemently against using DRM in its products as when it first started making games.

Reclaim Your Game (RYG), an organization dedicated to uncovering the secrets hidden in games (like DRM, and questionable clauses in end-user license agreements, terms of service of agreements, and privacy policies rolled into game releases), has taken the time to dig through The Sims 4, the latest release in EA's popular people simulator for various platforms.

Capcom is ditching Games For Window Live in three more games - Dead Rising 2, Dead Rising 2: Off the Record, and Resident Evil 5 - but the exact timeframe for when these titles will make the full transition to Steamworks is to be determined.

Titanfall is available for free for a limited time on PC as part of EA's Origin Game Time promotion. Obviously you'll need to be an Origin member and have the client installed in order to play it. Those interested in playing Titanfall simply have to add the game to their Origin game library and download it.

The free play event for Respawn's online-focused, future-leaning first-person shooter will only last for 48 hours.

Those interested in purchasing the game after the free trial period ends can do so and continue their progress from the trial.

EA announced that it is letting those who have an Origin account play Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare for free for a limited time. For 72 hours you can play EA's and PopCap's' team-based Plants vs. Zombies-themed online shooter via the Origin Game Time program.

Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare pits a team of plants against squads of zombies in 24-player suburban multiplayer arenas. As you progress through the game and gain victories you unlock all kinds of game elements and characters.

An investigation by Reclaim Your Game reveals that the new version of The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection contains SecuROM, the notorious DRM. But the worst part is the fact that, while EA was giving away the game for free (because it is ending support for it) to anyone with an Origin account, it didn't bother telling anyone that the game contained this DRM scheme.

Ubisoft has received summary judgment from a U.S. District Court judge that allows it to separate itself from a long-running legal fight over patents related to digital rights management, including its own Uplay service. The lawsuit began in 2011 when Digital Reg of Texas, LLC, filed a lawsuit against Adobe Systems, Valve, Ubisoft and other companies over various aspects of their digital content delivery and authentication services. Some of the defendants (like Valve) settled with the company. Ubisoft did not settle and has been found not guilty of infringement.

Ubisoft announced its open-world hacking game Watch Dogs has sold-through more than 4 million copies in its first week of availability based on NPD and GFK data and internal estimates as of June 3, 2014. Watch Dogs is also the company’s best-selling game ever in week one period, according to internal estimates for Ubisoft’s Watch Dogs worldwide sales data for all platforms as of June 3, 2014.

If you thought that PC Watch Dog players were the only ones having problems because of Ubisoft's Uplay DRM software, then we have a surprise for you: Xbox 360, Xbox One, and PS4 owners of Ubisoft's open-world hacking action game are also struggling to play the game. So says this advisory from Microsoft to Xbox players - and it's not just Watch Dogs suffering from Uplay problems.

While Ubisoft's open world hacking game is getting fairly solid reviews out of the gate, several owners of the PC version of the game are saying that it has lots of problems with general crashes, sound issues, frame rate degradation, and issues with various graphical drivers from Nvidia.

In a surprising new interview with TorrentFreak, Square Enix senior manager of business and legal affairs Adam Sullivan said that digital rights management (DRM) is a necessary part of doing business in this day and age and that it won't be going away anytime soon.

Ubisoft is offering Uplay users all-expenses-paid trips to E3 in Los Angeles by becoming ambassadors for its (often mandatory) games platform Uplay. Ubisoft announced that 12 winning fans will "receive the VIP treatment" with paid travel, access to the E3 show floor, a ticket to the Ubisoft press conference and exclusive meetings with Ubisoft's development teams. One thousand fans will also be given an invitation to "the Uplay lounge", a pop-up event held near the Los Angeles Convention Center during E3.

When the PC version of Ubisoft's Watch Dogs releases later this year it will require consumers to install the company's Uplay software. Even if the game is purchased through Steam, users will still have to install Uplay, according to CVG. All PC versions of the game will use a mandatory Uplay client that players will have to log on to in order to activate the game.

Head of Xbox Phil Spencer told Microsoft's Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb during his latest podcast that last summer's controversy about Xbox One's DRM hurt him personally.

Spencer also said that he knows Microsoft could have done a better job communicating this last year.

Electronic Arts has launched a new promotion similar to Microsoft's Games With Gold for Xbox Live. The new promotion is called "On The House," and gives away a free game from time to time. The only catch is that you have to be a registered user of the company's Origin digital distribution platform.

"We're gamers, too," EA said. "We appreciate you making Origin your gaming home... and besides, who doesn't like free stuff?"

The first game available to consumers for free is the horror action survival game Dead Space.

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.

Some good news for fans of the RPG being developed by Obsidian and South Park Studios: It will be a Steam game and will not use Ubisoft's uPlay DRM. Responding to a question about whether the game would require uPlay to be installed in order to play, Obsidian Entertainment's official twitter account confirmed that the PC version of the game will not use Ubisoft's uPlay; instead it will be fully integrated into Steam.

The rights to publish the game were acquired by Ubisoft in an auction following the bankruptcy of its previous publisher THQ.

In a thread on Reddit, Valve front man Gabe Newell said something that surprised a lot of people: that he's okay with EA's Origin digital distribution platform running on Steam Machines. While we don't know how Steam OS and Origin would cooperate within the same environment, Newell's comments continue to illustrate Valve's commitment to being an all-inclusive platform for all kinds of games and methods of delivery, etc.

According to details found in the Steam Database brought to light in this NeoGAF thread, the new patch that rolled out for Fallout 3 looks to have removed Game For Windows LIVE features from the game. According to the thread, variables with names like ShowCDKeyOnLaunch and LegacyKeyRegistryLocation have been removed, which is a good indication that the Microsoft gaming service is no longer supported by the game.

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:

After a two week hiatus (thanks mostly to the holidays and Andrew's self-imposed exile to a small town in Kentucky) we return with Super Podcast Action Committee Episode 81! On this week's show hosts Andrew Eisen and E. Zachary Knight talk about the Killer Instinct DRM that popped up during a recent competition at a NYC college, the EFF's annual Wish List, and investors suing EA over the shaky Battlefield 4 launch. Download Episode 81 now: SuperPAC Episode 81 (1 hour, 17 minutes) 88.4 MB.

According to this Polygon report citing a YouTube video from "Team Spooky After Hours," the DRM in the Xbox One title Killer Instinct reared its ugly head during a tournament that took place at Queens College in New York.

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.

In an interview with GiantBomb CD Projekt Red CEO Marcin Iwinski says that most companies use digital rights management software as a smokescreen to cover their asses. Iwinski and his company, who are best known for The Witcher series of action RPGs, is a staunch opponent of DRM.

Update: Ubisoft says that it plans to phase out its Uplay Passport and will offer one as a free download for Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag (thanks to Polygon).

For some reason The Witcher series developers decided that it was necessary to confirm that the next title in the series on the PC would have no digital rights management software in it. In an open letter to the community, CD Projekt Red CEO Marcin Iwinski addressed apparent concerns within the community that the PC version of its upcoming action role-playing game The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt would contain some form of DRM.

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).

BioShock 2 no longer uses Games for Windows Live, according to ShackNews. 2K Games has switched Irrational's game over to Steamworks and has made the Minerva's Den DLC free to current owners.