Following up on comments he made earlier last month, Mutant Mudds and Dementium developer Jools Watsham clarified his comments about the Nintendo 3DS and piracy in a new blog post (as reported by Eurogamer). Concerned that some in the community took his comments to be a slight against Nintendo and the 3DS platform, Watsham tried to clarify what he meant.

On Friday morning's edition of Morning Joe on cable news network MSNBC Congressman Tim Huelskamp (R-Kansas) said that he doesn't think changes in guns laws would have stopped the Sandy Elementary School shooting last week that resulted in the death of 20 children and six adults. He also talked about violent video games, but to the congressman's credit he mentioned his own parental responsibility in keeping his son from playing "M" rated games.

Andrew Eisen's latest video is probably not safe for work, school, or your local church group, but it raises an interesting point about who among the human race might be categorized as a$$h*les.

From DRM to piracy and attitudes about the holidays, Andrew lays it all down in the simplest terms and with the most colorful language he has used to date. You can check out his latest video on his YouTube channel or to your left.

Well, the Wii U has been out in the States for a few weeks now and many of you have gone hands-on with it.  So, how do you think Nintendo’s new console stacks up to the competition from a graphics standpoint?

This is sure to put analyst Michael Pachter on someone's naughty list: Recently he said that Activision needs to start charging a fee for the multiplayer portion of its Call of Duty games. Wedbush Securities industry analyst Michael Pachter made his comments during the Digital Game Monetization Summit in San Francisco, California (as reported by GamesIndustry International). During his presentation he said that Activision made a serious mistake when it didn't implement a subscription-based model for Call of Duty multiplayer.

My, Mr. Zelnick sure is chatty this week.

Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick told GameSpot UK that the secret to Grand Theft Auto's continued success is the fact that the games are released years apart, making each debut special.

"It's our view that if you want intellectual properties to be permanent," said Zelnick, "then you run the risk in that circumstance of having consumers fall out of love with that franchise. [Activision] obviously views the world differently."

The transition to the next generation of consoles will not be without a few casualties, says Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick.

"If you're not capitalized for the transition, you can find out that you're not there for the transition. And historically, in every transition that's occurred in this business, one or two third-parties have gone out of business."

Seizing on a new national survey in Australia, two "experts" have used it as an opportunity to warn parents of the dangers of video gaming. A survey conducted by the Interactive Games and Entertainment Association with the help of Bond University, found that right around 95 percent of boys between the ages of 6 and 15 described themselves as gamers. The survey of more than 1200 Australian households also found that the most popular genres among this age group were first-person shooters, action and fighting games and role-playing games.

In a guest post on GIGA OM, Ben Lee, the legal counsel for Twitter argues that it's high time that those who want to go to war over patents - particularly those who use lawsuits as a business model as opposed to actually building anything - should have to bear the cost of litigation.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) have decided to capitalize on the release of Pokémon Black and White 2 (it was released this Sunday) with the release of a game that depicts the abuse Pokémon might go through in their own special web game called Pokémon Black and Blue. Their catchphrase for the game is "gotta free 'em all."

Are there any themes or topics that should never be explored in a video game?

In episode 14 of the Super Podcast Action Committee, Andrew Eisen and E. Zachary Knight talk about the UK researcher who thinks parents should be arrested for buying their children age inappropriate games, Ubisoft's rootkit controversy, the results from last week's poll at GamePolitics about Humble Bundles, EA's lawsuit against Zynga, the death of the Cybersecurity Act in the Senate, and a whole lot more.

An editorial in the Baltimore Sun written by former White House and Pentagon official Douglas MacKinnon laments the "lessons lost" that could have come out of the Aurora, Colorado shooting about what the author calls "a culture that desensitizes us to violence." While his general sentiment that there are lessons to be learned about the shooting, what those lessons are or might be are up for debate.

In Episode 12 of Super Podcast Action Committee, Andrew Eisen and E. Zachary Knight discuss Fez developer Phil Fish's decision not to fix the patch for the game before re-releasing it to Xbox Live (because it costs too much money), Uniloc's patent infringement claims against Minecraft maker Mojang, last week's results from the GamePolitics poll, and the media trying to blame Batman comics, movies and games for the horrific Aurora, Colorado theater shooting.

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.

Way back in June we detailed the trouble Anita Sarkeesian ran into after launching a Kickstarter for a video series called "Tropes vs. Women in Video Games." Despite the negative and frankly inappropriate feedback to the Kickstarter, the project generated $158,922 in funding. The original goal was $6,000.

In an interview with Reuters, the US Court of Appeals (Chicago) judge who recently tossed the patent litigation case between Apple and Motorola described patent litigants as "animals" and said that many companies should not have patent protections.

If you are reading the web, playing a Facebook game, or watching a YouTube video, you could be violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1984 - at least according to the way the Justice Department has interpreted it in several recent cases. The law was originally passed to protect government computer systems and financial databases from hackers, but amendments and new interpretations by federal prosecutors have taken a well defined law into broad interpretation.

If 38 Studios is forced to sell the IP related to Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning and the MMO Project Copernicus (set in the same universe), one wonders how much both properties would be worth. Joystiq decided to ask Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter for a valuation and he came to the conclusion that 38 Studios' IP is worth about $20 million.

 The Angry Joe show is pretty angry and anyone with basic English skills should note the tone of his show with the use of an adverb as his first name. Still Joe has a lot to be angry about with Street Fighter X Tekken, because, as he notes in his latest video, it's not like Capcom hasn’t faced the outrage of fans over the practice he is ranting and raving about ("DLC" on the disc) in the past...

Jerry Prochazka, President of the gaming league vVv Gaming, has penned an open letter to the competitive online gaming community asking them to join him in ridding the community of the homophobia, racism and sexism that seems to be considered acceptable behavior by some in the online gaming community.

Destructoid's Jim Sterling detailed last week what he calls "a Mass Effect 3 gay love story" on Destructoid. This week as part of his Jimquisition show on The Escapist, he offers a sultry reading to make the whole story come alive. This also marks the first time that the show has been age-gated. Does that mean it is too saucy to be posted without a warning? I doubt it. Here's what Jim had to say about it on Destructoid:

The latest episode of Jim Sterling's The Jimquisition on The Escapist takes on Ubisoft for what he calls a "litany of crimes" against consumers. The outspoken Destructoid editor has said a fair share of unflattering things about Electronic Arts, and now he takes aim at the company he calls "the EA of Europe" for all the horrible things they put consumers through who simply want to enjoy their games. You can watch the video to your left or visit The Escapist to catch the latest episode.

While criticizing the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) seems to be a frequent activity for many Canadians unhappy with the way it deals with problems related to broadcast media and the Internet, Canada Research Chair in Internet and e-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa Michael Geist recently penned an editorial praising the commission.

If you are a fan of propaganda and that classic art form of stretching the truth, then you might want to check out this New York Times editorial penned by RIAA CEO Cary Sherman. In it he claims that technology companies like Google and Wikipedia were the only driving force behind the letter writing campaigns to lawmakers and website blackouts that happened in protest of SOPA last month.

"I Feel Used" quips Volition Designer Jameson Durall in a post on #AltDevBlogADay. In a lengthy post Durall rails against the used games market and how it is "significantly impacting the revenue" developers receive. He talks about how great it is that developers are coming up with new ways to recoup money from the used games market such as online pass codes:

Zack Bastian, contributor the lovely Law of the Game Blog, talks about what to expect in the Call of Duty lawsuit between EA, Activision and former Infinity Ward front men Jason West and Vince Zampella. Besides offering a look back at the case as it has progressed so far and what caused it to happen in the first place, Bastian explains why this case is so fascinating to legal eagles. Here's a sample (I encourage you to go and read the whole thing):

Some have said "it will be a cold day in hell when I agree with Glen Beck about any issue." Well, today is the day you put on three sets of thermal underwear because you are about to mostly agree with the man that everyone loves to hate. Yesterday the conservative firebrand spent a good portion of his Internet program deriding PIPA and SOPA and calling listeners to action against it..

An interesting story on The Hill points out that U.S. President Barack Obama faces a tough choice if the Stop Online Piracy or Protect IP Acts are passed by lawmakers because he has a vested interest in both Silicon Valley and the entertainment industry - two segments of the business community that heavily contributed to his 2008 campaign and continue to support him in 2012.

Left-leaning political blog DailyKOS joins the editorial pages of the New York Times and Los Angeles Times in opposition of the House's Stop Online Piracy Act and the Senate's Protect IP Act. In a post titled "Congress is close to destroying the internet (no hyperbole)," DailyKOS says that it is not hyperbole when they say that lawmakers, big Pharmaceutical companies, and the recording, and movie industries are out to destroy the internet.