In Episode 8 of the Super Podcast Action Committee, Andrew and Zachary actually manage to stay close to the 60 minute mark this week! Santa is real! The topics for this week's show include the Tetris cloning case ruling, Australia's new R18+ rating category for games, various topics related to Microsoft, and much more. Download Episode 8 it here: SuperPAC Episode 8.

Last month IGN opened a new portal dedicated to Middle Eastern countries and this month it is tackling a whole new region on the map: Asia Pacific. The News Corp. owned mega-portal dedicated to gaming and entertainment will be launching a portal to serve China, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines and Hong Kong. 

Imagine Publishing announced that its top two Xbox 360 magazine brands, X360 and 360 Magazine, will be combined into one publication. The new "enhanced publication" will be led by Editor Dan Howdle. Issue #87 of X360 will be the first issue to reflect the changes. It goes on sale July 11 and will feature articles on every major title from E3, exclusive interviews and an enhanced DVD.

Anyone that has ever flipped through the pages of Computer Gaming World knows the epic struggles between Tom Chick and Bruce Geryk in their popular column Tom vs. Bruce. The second most popular column at the time in the magazine could return if it can raise enough money to do so. The Kickstarter campaign is asking for $10,000 to write ten brand-new columns to be released on a monthly basis over the next year.

IGN Entertainment and Middle Eastern media company T-Break Media have launched IGN Middle East, a website dedicated to gaming that will serve up game and entertainment content to an estimated audience of 340 million people in 15 countries such as the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Egypt, and Morocco.

Future Publishing, the publisher of some of our favorite magazines and publications, has announced a personnel shuffle today and the closure of one magazine. The personnel switch-a-roo is meant to align its games team to (hopefully) increase its digital business across the web and mobile devices.

Andrew Eisen, E. Zachary Knight, and I have been toying with the idea of doing a podcast for quite some time, and after much discussion, consternation, and a couple of dry runs with the process of recording and editing one, we've finally come up with our first episode. We're calling it the "Super Podcast Action Committee," mainly because we like the idea of being part of a Super PAC, but without all the red tape and influence peddling.

Adam Sessler officially exited stage right at G4TV, according to a Kotaku report, and while the split seems to be less than amicable, Sessler's representatives are playing down any tensions that might possibly exist between the long-time network host and the network. The last episode of X-Play featuring Sessler aired on April 25. Sessler had been the face of X-Play since its launch and a regular lead anchor on the network's coverage of various events from Comic-Con and GDC to DICE and E3.

Students who enroll in a new video game-based narrative writing course at the University of Iowa beginning in the fall will get a chance to explore worlds, characters and plotlines popularized by video games. They'll also get credits. The course is called "Specialized Reporting & Writing, Video Games & Communication," and is a step by the university to add video games into the curriculum, though video-game education experts say that analyzing off-the-shelf commercial games isn't the typical approach taken by universities.

GameSpot and Giant Bomb owner CBS Interactive has inked a deal with Justin TV and Major League Gaming to bring advertising, promotions, and sponsorships to the game competition and game-streaming service. More importantly, it makes CBSi Games the exclusive online broadcaster of the Pro Circuit competitions.

A nifty Flash game called The Republica Times lets you be a would-be editor-in-chief for a state-owned newspaper where you must balance editorial control with keeping the government happy by selecting headlines that make your country look like a utopia instead of the mess that it probably is. With a little imagination, you can pretend you're in Russia, Cuba or North Korea keeping the populace safe and happy with news that is likely one-hundred percent fabricated.

If you weren't at PAX EAST in Boston then you missed out on some great panels. One of the wildest was The Escapist's Blankety-Blank panel, which recreated the classic TV game show Match game using a PAX East audience and a clever group of panelist to create a game-related version of the show.

The latest edition of The Escapist's The Jimquisition tackles BioWare's decision to make changes to the ending of Mass Effect 3 after fans applied public pressure on the company through petitions and general Internet rabble rousing. The latest episode of Jim Sterling's video show is called "Changing A Game's Ending And Destroying Art," and you can probably guess where he is going with it.

Here's the tease from the official site:

Yesterday Giant Bomb and GameSpot announced that they were getting the band back together, in a manner of speaking. While the deal might have seemed like a spur of the moment deal that happened over night Giant Bomb Editor-in-chief Jeff Gerstmann had been talking with GameSpot for quite awhile about it.

According to a GameIndustry International report and this NeoGaf thread, a handful of IGN and 1UP employees have been laid off today. IGN's Jack DeVries and 1UP employees Matt Leone, Thierry Nguyen, and Ryan Winterhalter have been let go.

"As of today, I no longer work for 1UP. Not sure what's next yet. Contact me and offer me glorious things!" tweeted Matt Leone.

Jeff Gerstmann and friends formed GiantBomb after working at GameSpot, who fired him in 2007 for writing a Kane & Lynch: Dead Men review that Eidos disagreed with. Management at the company acquiesced to pressure from the publisher (because they were giving the popular site lots of advertising business) and let Gerstmann go.

The Washington Times has an opinion piece that takes a shot at German Chancellor Angela Merkel's administration over what they are calling a proposed "Drudge Tax." The reference is to conservative Matt Drudge's popular web site The Drudge Report, which aggregates news from all over the web. While the flavor of The Drudge Report may not sit well with many, the concern with a new proposal being pushed by Merkel's administration is that it will levy taxes on web sites that aggregate content.

The company behind The Verge, SB Nation and Vox Games has managed to raise an additional $17 million in investments from various sources, according to GameIndustry International. The information on the new financing was disclosed in a Form D filing from CEO James Bankoff with the SEC. Vox Games, the company's newest venture, made a splash when it hired Joystiq's Chris Grant, Kotaku's Brian Crecente, and former The Escapist EIC Russ Pitts - among others.

Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has done something that no other individual or company has been able to do in a long time: surpass the number of monthly visitors gaming sites IGN and GameSpot get. For the first time the for-profit gaming community site Wikia is the number one destination for gamers, beating out the likes of GameSpot and IGN who have dominated the top two spots for years. Wikia had 26 million monthly unique visitors last month.

Internet advocacy group Public Knowledge has launched a new web site called The Internet Blueprint. The goal of this new hub is to develop bills that will strengthen internet laws and ultimately make the internet a better place. The site is the group's response to lawmakers in Washington who asked Public Knowledge for input on how to improve the Internet.

Vox Games has launched over at The Verge, offering what can best be described as well-crafted and thoughtful long-form journalism. The gaming hub features top talent from such publications as Joystiq, Kotaku, The Escapist, and more.

ABC's popular late night news program Nightline, will offer viewers an exclusive inside look at the working conditions at one of Foxconn's notorious assembly plants on Tuesday evening. The program promises an "unprecedented" look inside Apple’s Foxconn plants in China, which have been criticized as being sweatshops and labor camps with poor working conditions that treat their employees horribly.

Yesterday, we reported that French gaming site Gameblog had apparently been blacklisted by Activision for reporting that Amazon’s French portal had briefly posted a listing for Call of Duty: Black Ops 2.

Gameblog editor Grégory Szriftgiser spoke to Kotaku about what happened:

Activision is not a happy camper today as the name of its next Call of Duty title is leaked by Amazon's French portal, then quickly taken offline. According to the Amazon France page, the name of the next game is "Call of Duty Black Ops 2." The news was first reported by Gameblog.

Two of my favorite sites - GamesIndustry.biz and IndustryGamers.com are - set to merge later this month, with a brand new site, new staff members, tools, industry-only discussions areas, and additional services for "verified industry professionals." 

A story by the UK's Daily Mail newspaper and the BBC that tapped an expert claiming that games were turning children who played them in to the wee hours of the night in to zombies has been debunked. The expert cited in the story says that the quotes attributed to him were completely fabricated.

The Daily Mail and BBC reports quoted Robert Hart-Fletcher of charity Kids and Media. According to the reports he said:

At the same time Future was laying off employees at multiple publications within its ecosystem, IGN was telling long-time video game site VooDoo Extreme that they could no longer afford to pay them to update the site. They asked them to stay on as volunteers, according to one staffer.

Here's what "Jube" over at VooDoo Extreme said about the situation in a post called "Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes - The State Of Our Voodoo Extremities" :

Yesterday was a bad day for anyone that worked at Future US Publishing. The company laid off 19 employees as part of a restructuring plan from various divisions including Games Radar, Mac|Life, MaxPC, and Future Studios. The company will continue to publish Nintendo Power, PlayStation: The Official Magazine, OXM, and @Gamer.

The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS) announced three debates to take place at the 2012 D.I.C.E. (Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain) Summit. The event will be held at the Red Rock Resort in Las Vegas, February 8-10, 2012, and feature a line-up of industry leaders, decision makers and visionaries. Kicking off the conference on February 8 (prior to the Keynote Opener) will be the three "Hot Topics" sessions co-moderated by Adam Sessler, host of G4’s X-Play and Perrin Kaplan, Zebra Partners.

Ars Technica's senior gaming editor Ben Kuchera, is leaving the site after nearly a decade of service to the Conde Nast publication. He's taken a job at Penny Arcade where he'll direct the site's gaming coverage. Kuchera will be replaced by former Gamasutra contributor Kyle Orland.