Alexander Stubb, the Prime Minister of Finland, has publicly accused Apple of taking down two of the country’s largest economic engines: Nokia and the paper industry. Finland saw its sovereign debt rating downgraded from AAA to AA+ by ratings agency Standard & Poor.

Speaking on CNBC, PM Stubb pointed his finger at Apple's iPhone and iPad:

The Pokémon Company International announced several new deals with European licensees. Ten new deals have been confirmed with players as diverse as Arguydal (a food and drink company), footwear maker Aventure Diffusion, candy maker Bon Bon Buddies: Confections, school supplies companies Cartorama and Vadobag, apparel company Fashion UK, poster maker GB eye, video games accessories companies HORI and RDS Industries, and board game maker Winning movies.

Mojang will deliver a keynote address at the Brand Licensing Europe 2014 on Wednesday October 8th, event organizer Advanstar announced today. The presentation, "Minecraft: the rise of a world-class game and brand," will be presented by Mojang COO Vu Bu. The keynote is part of the Licensing Academy program of talks and seminars which are held during BLE 2014. They are free to attend and the full program can be found at www.brandlicensing.eu as well.

Sony has confirmed that the closure of PlayStation Home is eminent for both Europe and the United States. Sony Computer Entertainment said that the PlayStation Home service will shut down in European and U.S. territories on March 31 2015, the exact date that the 3-D social platform will close in Japan.

"Due to a shifting landscape, PlayStation Home will cease publishing new content on the 12th of November, 2014," Sony confirmed in a statement.

Crowdfunding platform Kickstarter announced today that its service is now available in Scandinavia and Ireland. Campaign creators who want to fund a game, movie, board game, card game, a new type of underwear -- whatever, can get started today. While users in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Ireland can start creating projects on Kickstarter today, the bad news is that they'll have to wait until October 21 for them to be made publicly available.

King.com's Catharina Lavers Mallet and Marie-Claire Isaaman from the Norwich University of the Arts are the latest inductees in the European Women in Games Hall of Fame. Created in 2011 and sponsored by EA, the Hall of Game is part of the European Women In Games conference which took place yesterday. Other nominees considered for this year's honor were Roberta Lucca and Debbie Bestwick.

Nintendo today announced a free game giveaway for consumers who buy a 3DS, 3DS XL, or 2DS and either Super Smash Bros or Pokémon Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire between now and January 12th 2015. The bad news is that this offer is only available in the UK and other PAL territories (Europe).

Those who meet the aforementioned requirements must also register their new system and the game they bought through Club Nintendo before January 12, 2015.

Cloud-based gaming service OnLive and TP Vision have announced a new strategic partnership that will bring the OnLive Game Service on new models of Philips TVs powered by Android that will be released in Europe during 2014 and beyond.

Nintendo of Europe has confirmed with Kotaku that around 320 of its employees will be laid off this week. That number includes around 130 full-time Nintendo of Europe employees, along with 190 temporary workers at Nintendo of Europe's Germany-based localization department. All 320 people will be unemployed by August 31, according to Kotaku.

Cloud-based gaming service OnLive announced that the OnLive Game Service will launch in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, The Netherlands, and Ireland in the fourth quarter of this year. The OnLive Game Service is already available in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

There will be no Minecon fan gathering this year, according to Mojang. Mojang COO Vu Bui announced on the company blog that it will skip its 2014 event of the Minecraft-themed convention, with the next Minecon tentatively scheduled for sometime in 2015.

"While we don't have a set date for the next MINECON just yet, I wanted to let everyone know that it won't be until some time in 2015. I'm shooting to have it in the spring in London," Bui wrote before cautioning that even the 2015 event was not set in stone or a guarantee at this point.

Gamescom organizer Koelnmesse revealed that Gamescom 2014 drew an estimated 335,000 people from 88 countries to its annual event in Cologne, Germany last week. The attendance number is slightly less than last year's attendance number: 340,000 people. This year's attendance number included 31,500 regular people and 6,000 members of the press.

Koelnmesse also said that 700 exhibitors from 47 countries showcased their gaming products this year, up from 635 exhibitors in 2013.

If you aren't at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany this week (because you live in North America or because you aren't independently wealthy enough to attend) then you can check out a lot of the show on Twitch.

All week the folks at Twitch will be hosting content directly from the show including demos from the show floor, press conferences, and whatever cool stuff is going on at Europe's biggest annual gaming event for fans and the media.

You can find Twitch's Gamescom portal at www.twitch.tv/event/gamescom.

The show hasn't even started yet but Gamescom organizers have already announced the nominees for the 2014 Best Of Show awards. How, you may ask, can nominees already be selected when the games haven't been seen and the show has not opened yet? Well, because they have been seen by a jury of journalists.

Koch Media and its publishing label Deep Silver announced that they have acquired the Homefront brand and all related assets from Crytek. The deal encompasses all things Homefront-related including the latest game in the series that was being developed by Crytek UK - Homefront: The Revolution. The game will continue to be developed in the newly formed Nottingham-based Deep Silver Dambuster Studios.

Stockholm, Sweden's week-long Stockholm Pride Festival kicks off today, and to celebrate Swedish retailer Webhallen is auctioning off a custom rainbow flag colored PS4 which it is calling the "Sony GayStation." Proceeds raised from this auction will go to the Swedish Federation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights.

The European Union announced today that it is working with member states to create guidelines that ensure that games and apps with in-app purchases are marketed to consumers in an "appropriate manner." These rules come after an investigation into App store marketing practices aimed at children.

The EU said that, going forward, the following guidelines will be applied to Apple, Google, and other app store owners:

- Games advertised as "free" should not mislead consumers about the true costs involved

Nexon and Wargaming, two juggernauts in the MMO gaming space, and Zynga CEO Don Mattrick have teamed up with UK-based investment fund London Venture Partners to create an early-stage seed fund.

The Game Developers Conference (GDC) Europe today released results from its second annual European State of the Industry Survey, which reveals trends around regional development hubs, tax incentives and more. The survey is conducted annually prior to the launch of GDC Europe in August.

GDC Europe 2014 is organized by UBM Tech Game Network and runs from August 11-13 at the Congress-Centrum Ost in Cologne, Germany. It takes place in tandem with Europe's biggest video game trade and public show gamescom.

New guidelines from Ofcom (the independent regulator and competition authority for the UK communications industries) will make switching from one superfast broadband supplier to another less expensive. Prior to changes in the rules, when a consumer switched from BT's Openreach (the company that controls BT's phone and broadband infrastructure) the new ISP would be hit with a £50 connection fee. This fee was typically passed on to the consumer.

If you play Sony Online Entertainment games is Europe then you deal with a partner company called ProSiebenSat1. Games (PSG). The company handles accounts for a number of SOE titles including PlanetSide 2, DC Universe Online and EverQuest 2, and many others. Soon users of those games will have to transfer their accounts to Sony Online Entertainment.

Nintendo announced today that it will consolidate its European operations and lay off 130 employees. The company said in a press release today that it will be closing its headquarters building and a warehouse in Großostheim, Germany and moving its European operations to Frankfurt. These changes mean that an estimated "130 permanent employees" will be laid off.

PR 101: if the President of the United States name checks your product in an international speech, it is the best thing in the world that can happen to you. While visiting Poland today, President Barack Obama mentioned CD Projekt Red's popular RPG, The Witcher. The last time the president was visiting the country, he was given a copy of The Witcher 2 Collector's Edition as a gift by prime minister Donald Tusk. Today while in Poland the President mentioned the game and admitted that he wasn't very good at games in general.

Nominees for the 2014 Nordic Game Awards have been announced today highlighting the best games from the region's developers over the last 12 months. Six prizes will be awarded at the Nordic Game show in Malmö, (which takes place from may 21-23, 2014), decided by a jury of judges selected from Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark and Iceland.

Rockstar Games' open-world action game Grand Theft Auto V was the biggest winner at this year's European Game Awards. The latest game in the GTA series picked up awards for Best Sound, Best Action Game, and Best Game. Ubisoft was named Best Publisher, while Goodgame Studios won awards for Best Studio and Best Browser game for Empire: Four Kingdoms. Other notable winners included World of Tanks: Xbox 360 Edition, Beyond: Two Souls and Battlefield 4 - which was honored for Best Art Direction and Best Multiplayer Game.

EVE Online maker CCP Games announced that it is offering live streaming options for its annual fan celebration EVE Fanfest (May 1-3). Each year, thousands of EVE Online, DUST 514, and now EVE: Valkyrie players from around the world travel to CCP's headquarters in Reykjavik, Iceland for three days of celebration of the EVE universe.

The European Parliament has voted to implement net neutrality rules that would - if fully approved - restrict internet service providers' from charging data-intensive services such as Netflix for faster network access. The new law still needs to be approved by Europe's Council of Ministers.

The new rules would also prohibit mobile networks and broadband providers from blocking services such as WhatApp messages or Google Drive storage, which critics argue could be exploited to allow child pornography to be shared via these types of services.

UK-based 'Cut the Rope' developer ZeptoLab has filed an official challenge to King's "Candy" trademark in Europe. The company filed its official challenge to the broad trademark on March 20. In the European Union, King still has an active trademark registration for Candy that covers video games, video game services, and clothing. ZeptoLab is strongly objecting to this in that region, noting that no company should holds the rights to such a broad and commonly used term such as "Candy."

Speaking at the Cebit tech fair in Hanover, Germany recently, European Commission vice-president Neelie Kroes said that the future of the internet has to be based on trust. Kroes is responsible for the European Commission's Digital Agenda, and was giving the speech to an audience which included such state leaders as German Chancellor Angela Merkel and UK Prime Minister David Cameron.

South Park co-creator Matt Stone is pretty upset that the European release of the game he helped create with Obsidian Studios, South Park: The Stick of Truth, was censored. In an interview with Metro, Stone expressed his frustration with the removal of seven scenes from the European release that involved abortion and anal probing.