Uber Entertainment announced that its popular RTS game Planetary Annihilation will no longer require players to be "always online." Uber revealed that it will soon make an offline mode available through an upcoming update, according to PC Gamer.

Minecraft creator and Mojang co-founder Markus "Notch" Persson has softened his stance on Facebook buying Oculus. In a tweet Friday Persson said that he's no longer angry that Facebook acquired the virtual reality hardware company. On Monday Oculus' Chief Technical Officer John Carmack responded to Persson's tweet offering to help port MineCraft to the Rift. Where the conversation went from there is unknown.

NIS America and GaymerX have amicably settled their differences, after a tumultuous day of bad press that reflected poorly on all parties involved. Sadly most of the bad press stemmed from a simple miscommunication between GaymerX co-founder Matt Conn and two principles from NIS America's PR & Marketing department. The dispute, over a $3,000 sponsorship deal at the recent GaymerX 2 LGBTQ event in San Francisco, has been resolved and the parties involved have apologized to each other for the miscommunication.

What was once a male-only Hearthstone eSports competition has been opened up to women after the Internet-at-large gave organizers International eSports Federation a public spanking yesterday. The company says that it has listened and has changed its policy going forward. The organizers came under fire on Tuesday when it was revealed that the Hearthstone IeSF World Championship in Baku, Azerbaijan would only be open to men.

Relic Entertainment has indicated plans to move its Warhammer 40K strategy games over to Steam in a bid to keep the multiplayer portions of the games alive, Eurogamer reports. The original Dawn of War and the expansions recently underwent a major update to preserve multiplayer, Dawn of War franchise design lead Philippe Boulle wrote on the Steam forum.

Yesterday in a blog post, Google Fiber's director of network engineering, Jeffrey Burgan, explained why Google's Internet service provider doesn't charge Netflix and other content companies for direct connections to its network. Obviously this makes Comcast, who is charging Netflix and other content providers for direct access to its customers, look bad.

Microsoft sent out an announcement to customers today to let them know that some changes would be coming to Xbox Live Gold membership. Starting in June Microsoft will bring its free games give-away program, Games with Gold to the Xbox One, in addition to Xbox 360.

They also announced that Deals with Gold for Xbox One, which gives members exclusive discounts on games and content in the Xbox Store, will also be coming to Xbox One.

Taking a page from GameSpot (apparently) Nintendo's online store is offering a refurbished Wii U 32GB Deluxe Edition (black) for right around $200. According to the store page for the unit, it comes with the Wii U console (Black/32GB Internal Storage), one Wii U GamePad (Black), a Nintendo Land game disc, the Wii U AC adapter, Wii U GamePad AC Adapter, a high speed HDMI cable, and the Sensor Bar.

Candy Crush Saga maker King has settled two of its most prominent trademark disputes - one with The Banner Saga developer Stoic Studio and the other with CandySwipe developer Albert Ransom. Both developers acknowledged on their respective web sites that they have worked out their problems with King.

Stoic was in a dispute with King over using the term "Saga" in the title of its game, while Candy Swipe developer Albert Ransom was disputing King's trademark claims because his game's release predated the release of Candy Crush Saga.

Glu's GameSpy Technology announced earlier this month that it planned to shut down its multiplayer services on May 31, leaving games like Battlefield 2 and Battlefield 2142 without a multiplayer solution for players.

More than 800 developers and publishers made use of GameSpy's services over more than a decade online, including Capcom, Nintendo, Electronic Arts, Epic, Ubisoft, and Konami. Nintendo previously announced plans to cease online services for Wii and Nintendo DS, which made use of GameSpy Technology, on May 20. of last year.

It will soon be legal to rips CDs, DVDs, and other media in the United Kingdom, according to this TorrentFreak report. The UK government has released a guide informing its citizenry that an upcoming revision of copyright laws in the country which will make it perfectly legal to make backup copies of CD and DVDs for personal use. Those changes will be in effect this summer.

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.

Gaming site Unwinnable has launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund a weekly digital magazine featuring excellent and insightful writing from its list of excellent contributors. You can get a sample here (PDF), but Unwinnable promises that future issues of the weekly digital magazine will feature the best games and culture criticism from the all-star voices that have made Unwinnable great over the last four years.

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.

If you have been waiting for Electronic Arts and its wholly-owned studio EA Maxis to wrap up work on the offline mode for SimCity, the company's high-profile "always-connected" city builder that garnered a lot of attention for its troubled launch last year, then we have some good news for you: it's nearly complete.

If you are having issues with the Xbox One or PC version of Titanfall, EA and Respawn may have a fix for you on its Titanfall Known Issues and Troubleshooting Information page. The page addresses common bugs encountered in the game and offers work-arounds for some of them. It also lists "gameplay-affecting issues we're currently aware of and tracking," says EA.

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.

Respawn Entertainment co-founder Vince Zampella said that neither his company or Microsoft will punish legitimate players who have bought the game early and decide to play it online. He does warn that those who do decide to play the game should expect some technical issues online prior to the launch of the game's servers in an official capacity.

It's a good day to be a writer at developer Naughty Dog. The developer of the hit PS3-exclusive The Last of Us has won the Outstanding Achievement in Videogames Writing award from The Writers Guild of America.

The annual award honors what the WGA picks as the best video game script of the past year. Judges for the award are caucus members or WGA members actively working in games, which means that whoever wins the word either has to be a member of the WGA or have an application to it pending at the time the script is submitted for consideration.

Developer Toylogic has some good news for people who want to play its free-to-play faction-based RPG game Happy Wars but don't want to pay Microsoft a monthly fee: they can now play the game without having to be an Xbox Live Gold subscriber.

Former Penny Arcade Report writer Ben Kuchera has officially joined gaming site Polygon as its new Senior Opinion Editor. Kuchera's time with the editorial offshoot for the Penny Arcade site came to an end in November. In an article introducing himself to the Polygon community, Kuchera explained why he chose Polygon as his final destination amongst a number of options available to him.

Good news for fans of violent games. A large majority of Americans are keen on getting the government out of the business of blocking violent games from being played. You may recall that for many years, various state and the Federal governments had been attempting to regulate violent games in some way.

If you own Mojang's turn-based card game Scrolls, then you can share it with a friend. To celebrate the holidays, Mojang is letting Scrolls owners give away a free copy of the game to one friend.

So how would one go about doing that? It's very simple: login to your Mojang account and then click on the "Send to a friend" button. A code will then be sent to the email you specify, and the recipient will have until January 31, 2014 to redeem the code.

The ESA Foundation (ESAF) has awarded the Massachusetts Digital Games Institute (MassDiGI) at Becker College a $25,000 grant to expand high school student participation in the annual MassDiGI Game Challenge and launch MassDiGI 101, which the college describes as "a series of mini workshops focused on game design and development."

GOG.com announced this morning that, from today forward it will provide its customers with a worldwide 100 percent money back guarantee for its entire DRM-free catalog of PC and Mac games available. Any game purchased on GOG.com can be returned within 30 days of its purchase for full money back if the company's support team can't solve problems getting the game running and the user's computer meets the requirements posted on the game's page.

You've probably heard of games being cancelled while being in early development, in beta, and at various stages of development but one game is likely the first to be cancelled after it has been released. Published by 505 Games and developed by Trickstar, Ashes Cricket 2013 is the first game to be cancelled publicly by a publisher - in addition to being unceremoniously pulled from Steam for being awful. Naturally 505 Games points its fingers at the game's developer who did not deliver a game up to anyone's standards.

The Standard Edition of GameMaker: Studio is free for a limited time, according to a post on the official GameMaker Studio blog. Normally the game engine software retails for $50, but the company is giving it away for free. It's the same set of tools used to make such games as Hotline Miami, Gunpoint and the original Spelunky.

It looks like the remnants of Blitz Games Studios live on with the formation of a brand new company called Radiant Worlds. Blitz Games shut down in September of this year citing a number of challenges including "frustrations with clients, the global economic crisis," and their "fair share of simple bad luck."

Recognizing that some Xbox One owners might be a tad bit upset that they can't play their shiny new console while Microsoft makes right on failing disc drives in some systems, the company announced that it would provide digital downloads of at least one launch title per customer so they have something to play while they wait for a replacement console.

The games offered as part of this include like Dead Rising 3, Forza Motorsport 5, Ryse: Son of Rome and Zoo Tycoon.

Just as Microsoft did last week when Sony launched the PS4, Sony has congratulated Microsoft on its launch of the Xbox One today. Sony's official PlayStation Twitter account offered the following congratulatory message to Microsoft and its Xbox team:

"Congrats, @Xbox @Microsoft! #NextGeneration #GreatnessAwaits"

Sony Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida also sent a congratulatory tweet to Microsoft's Phil Spencer, Phil Harrison, Major Nelson and Albert Penello: