The BBC reports that four members of the hacktivist group LulzSec based in the United Kingdom have been sentenced this week. They are Ryan Cleary, Jake Davis, Mustafa al-Bassam and Ryan Ackroyd. All four pled guilty to various charges either last year or earlier this year.

A survey carried out by VoucherCodesPro of 1,442 men in the United Kingdom found that men who have been in relationships for six months or more would rather play a new video game than have sex with their partner. Forty-nine percent of men surveyed said that they would choose video games over sex, while 32 percent would rather have sex with their partner, and 19 percent indicated that their choice would depend on the game in question.

In one of the most bizarre stories we've heard this week, Capcom's UK Marketing department will fill a swimming pool full of blood, gore and other body parts to promote the release of its next Resident Evil game in London.

The "first ever blood filled swimming pool" can hold about 55,000 gallons of water and will feature (fake, of course) human torsos as floatation devices, intestines as lane markers, and all kinds of gruesome objects floating in the water including bloody bandages, eyeballs, tendrils and blood clots. Zombie lifeguards will also be on hand...

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.

According to a report in the UK newspaper The Guardian - citing data from a recent Microsoft survey - as much as £30.9 million in purchases a month are made by children without their parents' consent. That is according to 28 percent of 2,000 parents surveyed in the region.

According to this Daily Mail story (by way of The Escapist), the leader of the Scottish Police are blaming Gears of War for a vicious knife attack.

UK Chancellor George Osborne and Culture minister Ed Vaizey said today that the European Commission's investigation into proposed tax incentives for the video game industry that have a cultural requirement will not stop UK lawmakers from providing games tax breaks. Speaking at the British Film Commission event for the launch of creative sector tax breaks for TV and animation, the pair showed that their support for tax breaks had not wavered.

Activision UK has come out of court victorious in a case against a former PR executive and a consultant from Activision's external PR company, Frank PR. Two people, Activision PR executive Kathryn Kirton, and Frank PR consultant Jamie Kaye were found guilty of embezzling money from the company.

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.

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:

Earlier in the week we learned that UK regulatory agency the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) had begun investigating free-to-play models in mobile and online games that used questionable practices to highlight (to children) buying upgrades in-games. Today we have learned the contents of the public survey that the agency is using to get information from UK consumers.

Responding to news that the UK regulatory agency the Office of Fair Trading is investigating free-to-play game practices, the UK video games trade body UKIE issued a statement saying that it would assist the OFT in find the truth.

The OFT announced that it would investigate how companies offer in-app purchases in games and if they use strong marketing techniques against children.

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.

Sega has finally admitted that the trailers for Aliens: Colonial Marines that were deployed before the game was released to promote it were misleading. Sega Europe has gone so far as to say that it plans to put disclaimers on all of the trailers in the United Kingdom because they do not reflect final game. The company did not say if similar disclaimers will be implemented in North America or other regions.

The BBC offers an interesting report on a new study that puts research claiming that too much "screen time" creates attention deficit disorders in young children on its ear, though researchers still say that screen time for children should be limited. The Medical Research Council (MRC) team, headed by Dr. Alison Parkes and Jane Gentle from Mumsnet England, studied more than 11,000 primary school students to determine a link between bad behavior to TV viewing and video game playing.

Tax relief for the video games industry in the United Kingdom has been delayed because the European Commission was not able to approve the Cultural Test provisions of the plan, according to this GamesIndustry International report. The Cultural Test requires those applying for tax credits to promote the culture of the UK in various ways.

UK games industry trade groups UKIE and TIGA expressed their disappointment in the news, but were optimistic that the government would continue to be committed to tax breaks for games developers.

Eurogamer details a bittersweet story of one Total War: Rome 2 fan who was immortalized in the game, but the 24-year-old named "James" who inspired developers Creative Assembly when he visited the studio, would later lose his fight with liver cancer.

The first Raspberry Pi game jam was recently held in Manchester, according to Develop. Using the affordable computing devices, the event offered 336 teachers and educators who attended the basic skills needed to apply their knowledge and teach coding in the classroom.

While Bethesda Softworks' popular role-playing game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has been out for over a year on various platforms (PC, Xbox 360, and PS3), the company says that it is far from done with the game and that downloadable content is helping the company keep the RPG relevant to this day and make some money in the process. Speaking to UK publication MCV, Bethesda European MD Sean Brennan is using retailers to help push the game’s DLC (Dawnguard, Hearthfire and Dragonborn) on Xbox 360.

When a publisher leaves a studio high and dry in the United Kingdom, industry trade body Tiga thinks that such abandoned projects should be eligible for tax relief. Tiga CEO Richard Wilson said that publishers have in the past left some studios in the UK “high and dry” by demanding large development teams for extended periods to then cancel a project with little or no notice at all.

UK retailer HMV will close an additional 37 retail stores and cut 464 more jobs, according to a CVG report. The latest round of store closures add to the 66 stores that were recently closed throughout the UK, and the loss of 930 jobs. The closures were announced by Deloitte, the company overseeing HMV's administration.

UK retailer HMV has managed to secure key new music, video games, and movie releases, after reaching an agreement with key suppliers this week. Earlier in the week it was announced that HMV closed 66 retail stores, which employed an estimated 930 workers.

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) announced today the nominees for their British Academy Games Awards 2013 to be handed out on March 5. A total of 53 games have been nominated for awards across 17 categories covering the last 12 months of releases in the UK.

More bad news for employees of HMV - particularly those 300 employees that worked for the UK-based retailer in Ireland. The Ireland-based division of the company has been shut down and some 300 employees are to be affected by the closures, according to a report in the Irish Examiner. All 16 of HMV’s stores have been closed according to the report, and the company has admitted that it was unable to find a buyer and that the stores would remain closed.

Introversion's tiered pre-order idea for its upcoming Prison Architect game seems to have paid off a great amount of dividends for the popular indie British studio. The company behind such hits as Uplink, DEFCON, Darwinia, and Multiwinia says that it has sold 30,333 pre-orders, generating $1,019,265. The company accomplished this by offering different tiers much like the rewards you might find attached to a Kickstarter campaign.

In an open letter to the media, three indie studio heads decided to break their silence and detail the struggle they have had working with publisher Mamba Games Ltd. The letter signed by Jakub Dvorsky, Managing Director of Amanita Design; Andrey Arutyunyan, Managing Director of Colibri Games; and Sergei Klimov, Director of International Publishing of Daedalic Entertainment, details at great length the alleged trouble these studios had in getting Mamba Games Ltd and Lace Mamba Global Ltd to honor its contracts and make payments in a timely manner.

An investigation conducted by UK gaming publication Computer & Video Games shows that some online retailers are not doing their best to keep under-age children from buying mature-rated video games online. The investigative report (which includes some video) shows a person purchasing three games online without any age verification checks blocking his purchase. The UK-based retailers found to be lacking in this area include Amazon UK, HMV and Zavvi.

Deloitte, the administrator handling HMV's UK-based business, has identified 66 HMV stores that will be closed in the next two months, according to a Eurogamer report. These retail store closures will affect 930 employees, the firm announced.

UK Retailer HMV has cut 190 jobs across the board, according to administrator Deloitte. Earlier reports had pegged the layoffs at 60, but the group overseeing the retailer's administration later confirmed the larger number. Most notably HMV’s head of technology and games Ewan Pinder was given a pink slip today. The 60 workers who lost jobs were apparently from HMV's head office in the UK.

Ukie, the interactive entertainment trade group in the UK, has issued a statement today praising a move to have computer science accepted as part of the English Baccalaureate in the United Kingdom's educational system. The group called the move a "major win in addressing the skills issues faced by the games industry."