If the laws being proposed by politicians in the UK this week were in place when SimCity and Diablo III launched, consumers would be able to get a refund. The BBC is reporting on plans to pass new laws that will make it easier for UK consumers to get a refund or a replacement product from companies when a digitally distributed video game, mobile app, or piece of entertainment content doesn't work they way it should at launch.

Swedish game engine software developer Bitsquid announced this morning that it has received Vinnova research funding from the Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems.

Director Sam Raimi claims that nine months worth of work on a World of Warcraft film was wasted because Blizzard Entertainment "mismanaged" production. Speaking to Vulture, he made his case for why the movie he was directing never happened:

Remember that thing back in 2007 where Hollywood heavyweight Jerry Bruckheimer said he would make some video games with a studio he set up called Jerry Bruckheimer Games? Yeah, that's not happening anymore. While the studio set up by the Pirates of the Caribbean producer never officially announced any games, it was common knowledge that he had at least three game projects in mind at the onset of his endeavor.

Speaking to Polygon, Star Trek and Star Wars: Episode VII director J.J. Abrams says that plans for movies based on Valve Software's hit franchises Portal and Half-Life are in the early stages and that that he's personally interested in bringing those universes to film. Abrams made his comments to the publication at the 2013 DICE Summit going on this week near Las Vegas.

UK-based film studio Pinewood is working towards launching a new school that teaches students about the creation and production of video games, according to Develop.

While Hollywood talks about the billions of dollars in lost revenue it loses from piracy it seems that its employees have a different philosophy. According to this TorrentFreak report - using data from BitTorrent monitoring company Scaneye - employees of major studios love downloading movies, TV shows and video games.

Speaking to the LA Times to promote the new Quentin Tarantino movie "Django Unchained," actor Samuel L. Jackson said that fewer guns are not necessarily the answer in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings that resulted in the death of 20 children and 6 adults. Jackson also said that statements against violent media like video games and movies have little to do with the shootings that have happened recently.

Xbox Live Gold members will get a wonderfully free treat this weekend: the world premiere of 2 Player Productions' documentary about Minecraft developer Mojang. In February of last year, 2 Player Productions launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise $150,000 for shooting an all-encompassing documentary about the indie studio and its founder Markus "Notch" Persson. By the end of the campaign they managed to raise $210,000 for Minecraft: The Story of Mojang. Not too shabby.

While Hulu Plus didn't make the content cut on Wii U's entertainment channel on launch day, it appears that the app for the popular movie and TV streaming service is available for use today, according to this Destructoid report. In case you didn't know, the Wii U Gamepad offers some enhancements to the service above other platforms - it serves as a second screen. It's hard to deny that these types of features are cool...

The all-star team behind Vox Media's popular video game site Polygon have apparently been working on a documentary chronicling the site's birth and the journey to create a new way of covering the video game industry. They have released a teaser trailer for the film, "Press Reset: The story of Polygon"

This article announcing the teaser trailer offers the backdrop:

When the Obama Administration's Copyright Czar Victoria Espinel sent out a request for comments on future strategies related to copyright enforcement, it came as no shock when trade groups representing the interests of the movie and music industry asked that a major P2P site be taken down.

According to a recent survey conducted by TechBargains.com (as reported by CED Magazine), 33 percent of cord cutters would not return to cable, even if the cost was drastically reduced. Cord cutters are consumers who have ditched traditional cable television viewing in favor of using online video services such as Netflix and Hulu.

Families of victims and survivors of the deadly shooting at the Dark Knight Rises opening movie who might want to sue the film studio Warner Bros or other companies such as AMC theaters, but experts say that history shows these lawsuits don't tend to get very far because it's tough to prove a liability. The reason that such lawsuits usually fall flat is because companies are rarely held liable for "intentional crimes of non-employees" and the ruling in Brown v.

Unfortunately CNN contributors aren't the only ones speculating on the motivations of 24-year-old Colorado mass-murder suspect James Holmes.

In his latest video Andrew Eisen plays the part of a The Dark Knight Rises fan responding to critics.

While the video is about the movie and the response to low review scores for the latest Christopher Nolan Batman film on Rotten Tomatoes (which apparently caused some fans to issue some death threats and share some other forms of vile speech), this video could easily apply to Halo, Uncharted, Madden, or any other beloved franchise with a protective fan base...

Some items were harmed during the making of this video. We were not involved.

Steven Davis dropped us a note informing us of a trailer that, he claims, he made for "some Hollywood producers" who asked him to make a movie trailer mock-up of Namco Bandai's classic arcade game Dig Dug. He calls the film "a fan made trailer" and lists all the materials he used to piece it together. The movie borrows scenes from such films as The Core, Tekken, Reign of Fire, 9, Monsters Vs.

According to a story on Courthouse news, Swedish game developer ProCloud Media is suing Paramount Pictures for $10 million in a California court claiming that the movie studio walked away from an agreement that gave them the right to develop games based on popular Paramount films.

The popular indie documentary about indie game development will be the very first feature-length film to be made available on Steam. Indie Game: The Movie will be available on Steam June 12, but those who buy it early before its release can get a ten percent discount. According to filmmaker James Swirsky, the 1080p video "will be DRM'd as much as any other Steam product/game," which means you'll need to be running the steam client in order to watch it.

Movie industry trade organization the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has hired a former Nintendo lawyer to head up its efforts to combat piracy. The group is also responsible for movie ratings. The MPAA announced on Monday that it hired Marc Miller to take control of its international anti-piracy enforcement operations.

He will serve as the senior vice president of Internet content protection and will work closely with the group’s army of lawyers to develop a refined civil and criminal litigation strategy to fight against copyright infringement.

Cory Doctorow, who you may know best as the gentleman behind the wonderful Boing Boing web site, has a brand new column in The Guardian examining why a former defender of SOPA would suddenly decide to switch sides.

The Hollywood Reporter has an interesting interview with the Motion Picture Association of America president Chris Dodd, who you may know better as the man who has served as both a Democratic Congressman and as a Senator from the great state of Connecticut. After having spent 36 years trapped inside the bubble that is Washington D.C., Dodd's first test were getting two bills fast-tracked through congress: SOPA and PIPA.

The film adaptation of 2K Games' first-person shooter BioShock has lost director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, according to a GameSpot report.

"To be honest, by now, I'm completely out of that, and developing other stuff," Fresnadillo told the site at a press junket for his new film Intruders. "Right now it’s on hold. The studio and the video game company, they have to reach some kind of agreement about the budget and the rating."

One of the reasons I dumped HBO was because my cable provider (who ironically, owns HBO) refused to offer HBO Go in my area. Now HBO is apparently in style locally and can be enjoyed on various platforms including iOS and Android devices. Today we learn that the on-demand HBO service will finally make its way to Xbox Live, according to this VOX Games report.

Indie Game: The Movie had a decent showing at the Sundance Film Festival, and now the documentary about the life and craft of several prominent indie game developers is heading to South by South West (SXSW) as a "Festival Favorite."

In case you don't know much about it, Indie Game: The Movie is the creation of first-time filmmakers Lisanne Pajot and James Swirsky who follow indie game developers Edmund McMillen and programmer Tommy Refenes (Super Meat Boy), Phil Fish (FEZ), and Jonathan Blow (Braid) at key moments in the game development process.

The New York Times Media Decoder blog has an interesting story about Michael O’Leary the senior executive vice president for global policy and external affairs of the Motion Picture Association of America. While the story is about toning down SOPA to address "legitimate concerns," the real story is something that opponents knew all along: the MPAA and friends are basically the authors of the bill.

If you are expecting to see HBO's original programming on Netflix anytime soon, you can just forget about that. HBO Co-President Eric Kessler told a gathering of industry executives in New York City that there was "no chance" his company will make its shows available to digital non-subscribers. The industry calls these people "cord cutters," - people who have shifted from cable TV to streaming online services like Netflix.

We have often wondered why the popular and free video service Crackle has not been made available on the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3. Perhaps because it is free... Anyway that has changed this morning, as Sony has added the service in PlayStation Home - it's virtual rest stop on the PS3. Sony has partnered up the service to bring free full-length movies - including the wonderful Final Fantasy: Advent Children - to PlayStation Home. Crackle is a free movie and TV show streaming service available via web browsers or a number of other devices - most notably Roku's various boxes.

EPIX, the premium entertainment service that is a joint venture of Paramount, Lionsgate and MGM, will soon be on some pretty familiar devices. The premium programming is already available on a number of platforms including Android and the iPhone. Emil Rensing, Chief Digital Officer for the company, says that the service will be available next month on Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Apple's iPad.

First Run Features announced the U.S. theatrical premiere of the award-winning documentary Man on a Mission: Richard Garriott’s Road to the Stars, a documentary about Richard Garriott’s lifelong quest to become the first son of an astronaut to go into space. Man on a Mission opens January 13, 2012, in theaters and VOD platforms nationwide. Man on a Mission is directed by Mike Woolf and produced by Brady Dial.