Standard & Poor’s (S&P) has lowered Sony long-term credit and debt ratings from "A-" to "BBB+," according to an IndustryGamers report. That report also notes that the firm also removed the ratings from CreditWatch, where it dropped them in November of 2011.

Ubisoft has issued an apology to customers who were affected by server moves this week that affected games requiring "always connected" DRM - even when they tried to play single player games. Because Ubisoft uses a DRM scheme on some games that require a constant connection, shutting the servers down that these games require made them unplayable.

Someone claiming to be a former Zynga employee in this Reddit thread says that it was the modus operandi of the company to do exactly what it has been accused of by several developers in the last couple of weeks: copy games that were deemed successful.

Responding to a recent and rather extensive report on the horrific working conditions at Foxconn in the New York Times, Apple's CEO Tim Cook came out strongly against it in a memo purportedly sent to the entire company. The article, at least in Apple's view, came to the conclusion that the iPad maker either knew about the abuses at these assembly plants in China and ignored them, or they simply didn’t care.

British broadcasting standards agency Ofcom has given broadcaster ITV a very public verbal beating today over labeling a clip from video game Arma 2 as real-life footage of a Libya-funded IRA attack. ITV included a YouTube video featuring shooter Arma 2 footage in a documentary on how the now-deposed (and deceased) Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi gave arms to the IRA.

A report on Digital Trends confirms that Capcom supports the efforts of the ESA as it relates to the Stop Online Piracy Act, though the confirmation is merely one sentence from a Capcom representative.

When asked about the company's support, Capcom's representative responded in an email saying "The ESA represents us on these matters."

This Penny Arcade post details one of the worst public relations train wrecks in history. It all starts with a customer enquiring about a controller he paid for well in advance, but quickly escalates into the kind of conversation you don't want to be a part of. Honestly I’ve seen better customer service from people at the DMV..

GoDaddy is not having a merry Christmas, and the way things have started out this week, its New Year's celebration will be punctuated with audible sobbing. A lot has happened to the company since last Friday. The first notable thing, according to VentureBeat, is that it has lost 37,000 domains - mostly the result of boycott efforts after the company was revealed on a list of companies that support SOPA.

Sony is apologizing this week to Japanese consumers who have bought its new PlayStation Vita hand-held, after some found that their systems were having a host of serious technical problems.

According to a Digital Factory investigation, the new dashboard update that was supposed to turn the Xbox 360 into a savvy media-friendly device suffers from one serious problem: reduced video playback quality. What's more, Microsoft reportedly knew about it and covered it up, says this C&VG report. Apparently the update forces video content to run at "limited range RGB levels," which results in washed out colors.

It might have seemed cute when marketing company TrashTalkFCM pitched the idea of releasing thousands of balloons into the San Francisco sky to promote Homefront during the Game Developers Conference earlier this year. But THQ realized as the balloons flew upwards and then inevitably fell down into the San Francisco Bay that maybe it wasn't such a great idea after all. The bad local and national publicity wasn't worth it.

While Americans were enjoying Thanksgiving last Thursday Australia's Internet service providers held a meeting to come to a consensus on how to deal with illegal file-sharing in the country.

According to a new survey by career services firm Glass Door, Zynga CEO Mark Pincus is not very popular. In fact, the head of the social game development firm has a 46 percent approval rating, compared to the average CEO rating of 62 percent. Anyone that follows politics knows that if you are below 50 percent approval rating then there's a serious problem with what you are doing - or at least people's perceptions of what you are doing..

Telltale Games has responded to allegations that several of its employees posted perfect ten user scores on Metacritic for a game they worked on - Jurassic Park.

Activision's social network that launched with the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 continues to have problems. Call of Duty Elite, the much vaunted social and stat tracking service is still experiencing problems and continues to prevent players from logging in. The service has been operational sporadically since launch, which Activision has blamed on what it is calling "over subscription to the servers." The service's level of operation is often listed as 'intermittent,' much to the chagrin of players who are paying for it.

Another day, another broken promise from a publisher about extra content included in a game for free. You may recall that earlier this month EA failed to deliver free content - Battlefield 1943 - that it promised to PS3 owners who purchased Battlefield 3 during E3 this year. THQ apparently has done the same thing to PS3 owners. THQ announced earlier this year that "an exclusive mode" would be available on the PS3 version of Saints Row: The Third that utilized the Penetrator (a three-foot long purple sex toy attached to a bat handle).

An internal memo obtained by Fortune's Term Sheet reveals that Zynga CEO Mark Pincus is very displeased with a Wall Street Journal report that says the company bullied employee stock holders because they gave them too much stock initially and wanted to add more value to its upcoming initial public offering.

Former Team Bondi studio head Brendan McNamara tells Eurogamer he thinks bad press and "being too busy" to nail down a new development deal following the completion of LA Noire were the two contributing factors in the company's eventual fall. McNamara claims that the studio was too busy to arrange a new deal until the project was finished and all the bad press from LA Noire's development had made it "impossible."

Ralph Baer, who is best known for creating the first home console system, isn't all that pleased with today's often violent video games. In an interview that appears in the lifestyle section of the Salt Lake Tribune, he goes so far as to call modern day violent video games a 'disgrace.'

Overclock.net has gathered an avalanche of stories related to how Battlefield 3 and Origin are being received in Germany (thanks to Solarian for tip). The short answer is that Germans seem to hate it because of the company's terms of service and what Origin is doing on people's PCs.

Blue's News has an interesting story about a public argument over who holds the rights to the upcoming shooter, Deep Black. The story begins when Strategy First and Just a Game announced distribution plans for the shooter. But that news story was followed by a complaint to Blue's News from Russian developer Biart claiming that Just a Game did not hold the rights for such a deal.

An Austrian court had found that right-wing Austrian politician Gerhard Kurzmann was not guilty of "incitement" related to a video game that required players to target and stop mosques, minarets and muezzins as they appeared on screen. Alexander Segert, the head of a Swiss advertising company that designed the game was also acquitted by the court.

This morning Kotaku pointed out a video from Germany's RTL Television in which commentators took great delight in mocking what they characterized as the "computer freaks" that they filmed at last week's Gamescom in Cologne, Germany. Today the show, apparently embarrassed (and likely humbled by fans that were pissed off at their mean-spirited characterizations) is now apologizing for their bad judgment in airing the report.

Sony's top executive defends the company's decision to wait a week after its major security breach to inform consumers, and said that it acted swiftly in doing so. Howard Stringer added that most security breaches go unreported to consumers. When companies do inform consumers, he says, it often takes them nearly a month to do so.

"We reported in a week. You are telling me my week wasn't fast enough?," said Stringer.

According to Stringer only 43 percent of companies inform consumers about security breaches. In the United States there are laws that require companies to tell customers about security breaches, and with Sony's high profile situation, you can bet that lawmakers are going to make those laws even tougher.

"This was an unprecedented situation," Stringer said, speaking publicly for the first time since the PSN and Station security breach.

Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest series creator and publisher Square Enix warns investors that it will report losses of around ¥12 billion ($148m / £90.6m) for its fiscal year later this week. Digital project cancellations, the recent natural disasters in Japan, associated closures and restoration of the company's amusement facilities are being blamed for the losses. The digital projects represent slightly over a third of the total loss.

"Under a rapidly changing operating environment and more prudent estimates of future cash flows, the Company plans to write down goodwill (approximately ¥8.8 billion)," read the statement. "Further, as a result of introducing a tightened selection standard regarding title lineup to strengthen the revenue base of the Company's digital entertainment segment, project development cancellation and related losses (approximately ¥4.5 billion) are expected."

Today AT&T begins controlling how much broadband users consume with a new cap. The new cap limits users to 150 GB for DSL and 250 Gigabytes for its UVerse service. This could prove to be a challenge to AT&T subscribers that want to use services such as Netflix and Hulu due to the massive amounts of data being transferred during streaming. AT&T joins Comcast and some smaller ISPs in limiting the amount of broadband users consume - and the penalty for going over is additional charges.

AT&T will charge an additional $10 per month for going over the cap. That charge is not a onetime thing either: users will be charged $10 for every 50GB of additional data over the cap. If you have children or additional internet users in your care, the new capping scheme could prove to be an expensive challenge.

Trip Hawkins, a founder of EA and the CEO of social and mobile game maker Digital Chocolate apparently owes the Internal Revenue Service $20 million. According to a Forbes report, Hawkins tried to use a personal bankruptcy to nullify the debt but a judge rejected it. U.S. District Court judge Jeffrey S. White upheld a lower bankruptcy court ruling related to tax shelters Hawkins has used to hide the personal wealth he gained from founding Electronic Arts nearly three decades ago.

Judge White said in his ruling that Hawkins knew he was insolvent after the IRS disallowed his tax shelters but "continued to spend money extravagantly with knowledge of his (federal and state) tax liabilities." The judge added that "Hawkins planned to defeat his taxes via bankruptcy and continue living the lifestyle to which he had grown accustomed."

We are happy to report that an earlier story about a user being banned from the BioWare forums who was then barred from playing his freshly purchased copy of Dragon Age II, is being called a "mistake" by BioWare. BioWare Community Coordinator Chris Priestly said in a statement that this is not the way BioWare handles a situation like this:

"EA strictly enforces the code of conduct at Social.BioWare.com. If a player violates the rules by using profanity, they will be temporarily banned," he wrote. "Unfortunately, there was an error in the system that accidentally suspended a user's entire account. Immediately upon learning of the glitch, EA restored the user's macro account and apologized for the inconvenience."

One BioWare fan who might have said the wrong thing on an official forum found himself in an awkward situation. After saying what some might deem a derogatory statement in an official BioWare forum, user v_ware found that he couldn't play Dragon Age II. What is odd about this is that Dragon Age II is not a multiplayer game. One of the reasons this may have happened is because forum accounts are connected to game registrations, and v_ware tried to register the game after he was suspended.

Still, it seems like a very odd situation to everyone; why would BioWare stop someone from playing a game they just bought even if that individual received a temporary ban on one of their forums? It's plain silliness. The ban made it so that v_ware couldn't play Dragon Age II for 72 hours. So what did he say that was so horrible?

I am sure that Blizzard (and other MMO companies) is delighted with today's press release from World of Wacraft gold reseller outfit BYGamer. While the press release isn't particularly thrilling one could imagine that the China-based gold farmers are not well liked on this side of the world.

The company issued a press release to announce changes to its web site - BYGAMER.com - which now offers visitors a plethora of fancy colors, improved navigation and lovely new frames. Are they mocking Blizzard? It sure seems that way.

The company tops off its wonderful announcement with customer testimonials:

"It’s amazing! What a beautiful site and Buy WOW Gold here is absolutely a good choice!, said new customer Monica to one of BYGAMER’s call center operators.

The company says that this new design is already proving to help "increase traffic and sales."

Full release below: