A spokesperson for Harmonix has confirmed with Polygon that the company has laid off an undisclosed number of employees.

"We can confirm that a small number of Harmonix employees were let go today," a Harmonix spokesperson told Polygon. "This decision was made due to shifting staffing priorities for Harmonix's multiple future projects."

Gustavo Zacarias of San Antonio, Texas was one of the winners of the2012 National STEM Video Game Challenge who joined a select group of students that participated today in the third White House Science Fair, an event that emphasizes and celebrates student achievements in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) competitions. The National STEM Video Game Challenge is an annual competition presented by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop and E-Line Media.

Last week TeamPixel announced that the effort to crowd source the purchase of the Homeworld series from THQ has failed after it learned that the license had been bought by someone else. The campaign began in January on Kickstarter, with TeamPixel promising to secure the license and make Homeworld 3 for PC, Mac and Linux, and Homeworld Touch for iOS and Android. The developer then refunded backers' contributions.

Game Developer Vlambeer can't seem to catch a break when it comes to other developers cloning their games. Their latest game to be cloned on the Apple App Store is Vlambeer's upcoming title Luftrausers. SkyFar is very similar to Vlambeer's game - in fact, except for a few minor aesthetics it looks identical to Vlambeer's game.

The former staff members of Zynga Boston have managed to raise $2.25 million for a new game development start-up called Proletariat. The new studio managed to raise all of its funds through an equity funding run, according to an SEC filing by the new company.

The $99 Android-based home console Ouya, has signed 10,000 developers worldwide that have signed on to produce content for the system, according to what head of developer relations Kellee Santiago told GamesIndustry.biz this week. Santiago, who co-founded Journey developer thatgamecompany and this year moved to OUYA, said that partnerships with larger companies will be announced in the coming months as well.

Earlier this week the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) issued a statement on CISPA (which we admittedly missed) coming out strongly against the cybersecurity bill passed in the House yesterday afternoon.

Developers must be careful of how they manage their free-to-play games. Speaking to Develop Editor Will Freeman at the F2P Summit, Peter Molyneux warned developers of the dangers that a set of regulations governing in-app purchases could have on the entire games industry in the UK.

Capcom is blaming development projects overseas for a revised financial forecast that takes into account a special loss due to game cancellations. The company said today that it will take a $73 million hit from cancelling various projects. The company also said that it will be making more of its games in-house due to a "drop in quality" from outsourcing projects to Western studios...

Staff at L.A. Noire developer Team Bondi have been laid off after the company's in-development title Whore of the Orient was unable to find a publisher, according to a report on MCV Pacific. According to Superannuation Warner Bros. backed away from a potential publishing deal "right before last Christmas," the publisher never officially or publicly confirmed that it had anything to do with the project.

TimeGate Studios faces $7.35 million in damages and has lost control of the Section 8 license following a successful appeal by SouthPeak Interactive. TimeGate Studios tried to defend a lower court ruling in the fraud lawsuit from SouthPeak Interactive after that court threw out an arbitration decision that led to the judgment.

During the United Kingdom's March 2012 Budget it looked like plans for tax breaks for video games developers were a lock, but a European Commission (EC) investigation that was announced today has put their future in doubt. The European Commission announced today that it plans to investigate the proposals, and questions whether there is an obvious market failure in the UK games industry.

Specifically the EC is seeking answers to four key questions related to the UK games tax relief plan:

Book publisher Seven Stories Press announced today that it will publish the English language version of the book about independent game Minecraft and its creator Markus 'Notch' Persson at the end of this year. The book is called "Minecraft; The Unlikely Tale of Markus "Notch" Persson and the Game that Changed Everything, and was written by Swedish journalists Linus Larsson and Daniel Goldberg, with the English translation being handled by Jennifer Hawkins.

In a recent interview with Destructoid, Bethesda Softworks marketing vice president Pete Hines told the publication that used game sales are "absolutely" a concern for his company but that they have handled it by lessening the financial impact through lots and lots of DLC for its various games including Fallout 3 and the last few games in the Elder scrolls series.

In a post today on the blog for DayZ - the zombie survival game he is working on (perhaps you have heard of it or have confused it with The War Z - it happens a lot) - which was originally built as a mod for the first-person shooter Arma 2, DayZ designer Dean "Rocket" Hall announces that he is taking a "two-month sabbatical" to go climb Mount Everest in Nepal.

Electronic Arts announced this morning that it is shutting down three games operated by its Playfish Facebook game development studio. The games going offline on June 14 include The Sims Social, SimCity Social and Pet Society. In a statement on its official blog, EA said it was shutting these games down because they no longer get the traffic they did at launch:

Don't like always-on games or consoles - you know, stuff that requires you to be connected constantly to the Internet in order to use it? Well former Epic Games creative director Cliff Bleszinski thinks that there's no avoiding a future filled with always online requirements and he thinks it is "coming soon and it's coming fast." Bleszinski made his comment in a recent personal blog post - a space where he often tackles subjects that drive gamers crazy. Clearly this is one of them.

UK agency the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has begun contacting game developers and publishers as part of an investigation to determine if any free-to-play games are acting within the law. While the OFT won't name names at this point, it says that it is contacting companies who have games with micro-transactions in them currently on the market.

The AbleGamers Foundation has won two award from the Multiple Sclerosis Society (MS Society) for its work on creating guidelines that aid game developers in making their games easier to use for those with various physical disabilities. The MS society has awarded the AbleGamers Foundation two awards including the da Vinci award for best product in communication/educational aids for its Includification game accessibility guidelines, and the Leo for People’s Choice.

The Vancouver-based development studio that created Resident Evil: Operation Racoon City and SOCOM: US Navy SEALs Fireteam Bravo 3 has instituted temporary layoffs, according to GamesIndustry International. Speaking to GII a representative for Slant Six Games said that it had to reduce operating cost in the short term and that it hopes to hire back as many employees as it can sometime later on down the road:

Harvey Smith's new book Big Jack is Dead is now available on Amazon.com, and it draws quite a bit of inspiration from his own life.

CCP Games today revealed the line-up of speakers that will be a part of the "Make EVE Real" track at its (sold-out) annual fan celebration EVE Fanfest from April 25-27. Dr. Richard Obousy (President and Co-Founder of Icarus Interstellar) and Chris Lewicki (President of Planetary Resources) will join Michael Laine (President of LiftPort Group) in sharing their thoughts on how current science fiction may soon become a reality.

Bethesda VP Pete Hines thinks that the debate about the acceptability of day-one DLC  comes from a misunderstanding from consumers on how the development process works. Speaking to OXM, Hines said that with most big budget games development of new content would stop a long time before the title’s actual release.

"I think there is [a misunderstanding], at least among a certain segment of the gaming audience," he said.

inXile Entertainment's isometric role-playing game managed to raise $4.1 million at the close of its Kickstarter campaign this weekend, making it the most well-funded video game in Kickstarter's history. The Kickstarter, which ended last night, generated a total of $4,188,927 from 74,405 backers. That is 455 percent more than the $900,000 that the developer asked for at the start.

Dead Shark Triplepunch has been named the winning team at Make Something Unreal Live 2013, Epic Games announced. The team has won a variety of hardware prizes in addition to the main award of a commercial Unreal Engine 4 license. The team from Belkinge Institute of Technology in Sweden won with their game Epigenesis, which was developed with Epic’s Unreal Development Kit (UDK), the free version of the Unreal Engine 3.

This weekend the Kickstarter for Richard Garriott's latest game, Shroud of the Avatar: Lost Virtues, raking in $1.9 million from backers. Adding that number with the money it raised from PayPal pledges on the Shroud of the Avatar Website, Portalarium sailed past the $2 million dollar mark. Over twenty thousand people backed the game on Kickstarter.

The Entertainment Software Association of Canada (ESAC) is urging members of the Canadian games industry to take part in a survey to gauge the size, composition and economic impact on the country's economy. The survey has been available for awhile, but today's public service announcement extends it for an extra week. Results of the survey will be published within a few months of its competition on April 15.

With 40 more hours until Shroud of the Avatar: Forgotten Virtues Kickstarter ends, Richard Garriott and Portalarium are making things interesting by adding some new Reward tiers for those who have not yet contributed and for those who may find some enticement in upgrading to get some spiffy new baubles in-game.

Sega has confirmed with Kotaku that it plans to close its Brisbane-based development studio later this year. Sega said that it would close Sega Studios Australia later this year, but gave no particular reason for shutting down the operation.

The publisher says it will shut down Sega Studios Australia later this year; no rationale provided.

According to data from the 2012 Game Developer Salary Survey (which was published in the March issue of Game Developer Magazine) the number of women working in the games industry is growing, but salary gap between the sexes is still apparent.

According to the data women only had higher salaries in one of seven categories: programming and engineering, but programming and engineering also has the smallest number of women working in those professions at four percent. Women were also hard to find in the audio sector of the industry at around four percent.