It looks like Electronic Arts is getting a little breathing room from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco this week concerning Keller v. Electronic Arts.

On July 31 the Ninth Circuit ruled that the company wasn’t protected by the First Amendment from former college athletes’ claims that the company violated their rights by using their likenesses in its NCAA Football games without paying compensation or getting permission.

The Humble Origin Bundle has two new games to choose from, if bundle purchasers are willing to pay more than the average price - currently at $4.82. The two new games are C&C: Red Alert 3 - Uprising for Steam and Origin, and Populous for Origin.

These two new games join Dead Space, Dead Space 3, Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box, Crysis 2 Maximum Edition, Mirror's Edge, and Medal of Honor. Paying more than the average price will get you The Sims 3 + Starter Pack and Battlefield 3.

EA's recently released free-to-play iOS sequel has the distinction of being the "most successful mobile game launch" in the company's history. Developed by EA studio PopCap Games, Plants vs. Zombies 2 has been downloaded 16 million times since its launch last Thursday on Apple's App Store.

Electronic Arts announced a new initiative for its Origin digital distribution platform this week called "The Origin Great Game Guarantee." The new policy gives Origin users who purchase EA-published games on Origin "timed refunds" dependent mostly on when a purchase has been made.

The Humble Origin Bundle has generated nearly $7.2 million from the sale of nearly 1.5 million bundles. It is officially the best-selling Humble Bundle to date, beating out THQ's and Deep Silver's bundles and all those that have come before it. The average price of the bundle is up two cents (from Friday's average price) to $4.82, as of this writing. The bundle has 9 days left to go.

On this week's show we talk about extreme developer harassment, GameStop's Xenoblade pricing, EA's Humble Origin Bundle, the latest poll from GamePolitics, and a whole lot more. Download Episode 65 now: SuperPAC Episode 65 (1 hour, 15 minutes) 69.3 MB.

Love it or hate it, the Humble Origin Bundle is on track to be the most successful Humble Bundle offering to-date if it keeps trending the way it has been in the last couple of days. As of this writing, the bundle has generated over $5.3 million from the sale of over 1.1 million bundles, with an average price of $4.80. The bundle still has a little over 11 more days to go before it is over too.

The Big Ten, Pacific-12, and Southeastern conferences will no longer allow EA Sports to use their respective league logos in the company's college football video games. The organizations join the NCAA, who announced last month that it would not renew a licensing agreement with EA - due to expire in June 2014. EA Sports can still pursue individual licenses for schools - they are not covered under the conference contracts - but will not be able to mention the actual conferences in its games.

As of this writing, the Humble Origin Bundle has generated over $3.6 million from the sale of a little more than 764,000 bundles. The Origin-themed, Not-DRM-Free bundle features a total of eight games including Dead Space, Dead Space 3, Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box, Crysis 2 Maximum Edition (includes 4 Limited Edition unlocks, and the Retaliation and Decimation packs), Mirror's Edge, and Medal of Honor. Paying more than the average price will get you The Sims 3 + Starter Pack and Battlefield 3. The current average price sits at $4.74.

There is no doubt in my mind that this latest bundle from the fine folks at Humble Bundle is going to get a mixed reaction from the game community. On the one hand it is offering up to eight high-profile games on the cheap; on the other hand all of these games are from Electronic Arts and use its Origin digital distribution platform - and at least three of the games require the bundle buyer to install Origin on their system in order to play.

Infinity Ward producer Mark Rubin welcomes the competition that the Battlefield series brings to the market because it makes Call of Duty a better product. He believes that competition from games like the Battlefield series helps push his studio to do more with its own games, and that's a good thing.

Today a U.S. court of appeals handed down a ruling in the case against Electronic Arts (EA) and the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) over the use of student-athletes’ likenesses in video games. Electronic Arts argued that using a player's likenesses was a practice protected by the First Amendment. In a 2-1 decision, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed, and remanded the case back to the trial court to proceed against all defendants, including the NCAA.

Electronic Arts filed a motion yesterday asking the court to dismiss the complaint in the antitrust lawsuit filed by current and former collegiate athletes against the company, the NCAA and the Collegiate Licensing Company (CLC) - according to a Polygon report. The thrust of EA's argument in that motion is that it should not be part of the lawsuit.

Financial analyst Edward Williams from BMO Capital Markets send out a research note this morning telling investors that EA's mostly flat revenue for the latest quarter was good enough to earn the company a positive rating from the firm. Yesterday EA reported non-GAAP revenues of $495 million and a non-GAAP EPS loss of $0.40, respectively. This compares to $491 million in revenues and a loss of $0.41 last year. BMO expected $451 million in revenue and a loss of $0.61, while consensus estimates were $454 million and a loss of $0.60.

In an interview with GamesBeat, EA's Frank Gibeau revealed a couple of interesting facts about the company. The first fact he revealed is that Apple was the company's biggest partner in the last quarter, raking in an estimated $90 million in app sales. The game that made the most money for EA on iOS devices was The Simpsons: Tapped Out. EA's sales through Apple's Store represented about 18 percent of its business.

The jury hearing the lawsuit between Electronic Arts and original Madden programmer and designer Robin Antonick delivered a stinging verdict this evening. After just three days of deliberations, a jury in U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California ruled in favor of Robin Antonick, awarding him what should be (with interest) more than $11 million, according to his legal team. The ruling also opens the door for Antonick to pursue the same claims against EA for games released after 1996.

Six current college football players have been added as plaintiffs to the anti-trust lawsuit that claims the NCAA owes billions of dollars to former players for allowing their likenesses to be used without compensation in games made by Electronic Arts. Former UCLA basketball star Ed O’Bannon is the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, which has been joined by 16 former college athletes. Basketball Hall of Famers Bill Russell and Oscar Robertson previously joined the lawsuit.

Attorney Steve Berman has issued a brief statement on the NCAA's decision to let its licensing agreement with EA expire next year. Berman is the managing partner of law firm Hagens Berman and co-lead counsel in a class-action lawsuit filed by former college athletes against the NCAA and Electronic Arts. The lawsuit, detailed by the law firm here, alleges that EA's NCAA branded sports games used players' likenesses without permission and without providing compensation.

On the heels of yesterday's announcement that the NCAA would end its licensing agreement with EA Sports - which is set to expire in June of next year - EA has assured fans that its NCAA college football game franchise will live on - even if it doesn't have "NCAA" in its title.

GamesIndustry International is reporting that EA Phenomic has been closed. The studio responsible for developing Spellforce and Command & Conquer: Tiberium Alliances is believed to employ around 60 people at one time, though the actual number of employees it had before closing is unknown as of this writing. While EA would not comment on the particulars of the studio's closure, it did issue a statement explaining why it had to shut Phenomic down:

Aaron Hernandez, who was charged with murder on June 26, will be removed from both Madden 25 and NCAA 14, according to a report from Joystiq . Hernandez was a tight end for the New England Patriots, prior to being charged with the June 17 homicide of Odin L. Lloyd in North Attleboro, Massachusetts.

When EA launched its online-only, always-connected SimCity game earlier this year, they insisted that the game just wouldn't work without the ability to let the cloud have access to all the game's data and computations. But if that's the case, then why is EA asking people about the possibility of an offline SimCity game?

UPDATE: Looks like EA has changed its mind.  A new message on the Darkspore forums reads:

"Welcome to the Darkspore forums. Thanks for supporting the game. We recently resolved an issue that was causing some players to not be able to connect to the game. If you any encounter any other issues, please contact help.ea.com for customer support. We will continue to support Darkspore, so feel free to continue to discuss the game here. Thanks – Maxis."

While Microsoft, Sony, and even Nintendo seem to be on the same page about messing with used games on their new systems, publishers are still being non-committal about how they will approach used games sales in this new generation. In the past some have tried everything from always-on DRM to online passes and even forcing customers to use software clients in order to play their games.

Electronic Arts has lost a lawsuit against Robin Antonick, the original designer and developer of Electronic Arts’ (NASDAQ: EA) best-selling Madden NFL Football games. Antonick alleged that he had signed multiple publishing and development contracts, culminating in a 1986 agreement that required EA to pay him royalties on any derivative works related to the original version of EA Madden, including current annual releases. The agreement also prohibited EA from using his confidential information.

Former college basketball player Ed O’Bannon says that his class action lawsuit related to various EA Sports games against the National Collegiate Athletic Association isn't about getting rich - it's about what is fair. The former University of California-Los Angeles forward says that lawsuit is about establishing the rights of players of the college sports’ governing body to keep proceeds from selling the rights to athletes’ likenesses used in TV broadcasts, video games and clothing lines.

If you are a PC owner that enjoys playing EA Sports titles like FIFA, then I have some sad news for you: you won't be playing the latest editions of these games. You'll be weeping alongside Wii U owners who also have been told that EA Sports titles are not available to you. The reasoning behind this, according to EA? Most of your PC rigs are just not powerful enough to handle EA's new Ignite Engine - the technology that was touted during EA's E3 press event being used to develop PS4 and Xbox One sports titles.

Having not learned any lessons from SimCity's abysmal launch because it was an "always-on" title, EA has revealed that the next Command & Conquer game being developed by Victory Games will be free-to-play and will have a similar always connected requirement.

Electronic Arts' President of EA Labels Frank Gibeau says that its online pass system was dumb, that it is dead and that it will never be coming back. EA announced back in May that it would wind down its online pass system. The system required consumers who purchased an EA game to punch a code in to get access to multiplayer and other game extras. If someone purchased that same game used they would then have to pay a small fee - usually around $10.

EA Labels president Frank Gibeau said during an Electronic Entertainment Expo analyst call today that the company is formulating a customer-friendly strategy for used Xbox One and PS4 games based on information released by platformer holders Sony and Microsoft.

Gibeau said the secondhand market has "certainly been a topic of discussion this week" and that his company is still digesting the information revealed earlier in the week. He promises a more definitive statement on the topic at a later date.