Actual details for the free to play bits can be found at the Team Fortress 2 website FAQ, but a quick rundown: A free TF2 account is any that hasn't purchased something in the Mann Co. Store (hats, unlocks, etc), but you can pick up a multitude fo starter packs for .99 cents, but beware; the steam wallet has a minimum of $5 when you transfer cash in there. People who had a copy of TF2 before the free to play get a free hat called the Proof of Purchase. Speaking of hats; they do nothing for you in game, but people complain because OMG MY GAAAAME. Get over it you big babies.

Lately, video game publishers have citied declining retail sales as how piracy is directly hurting them. Well it seems that retail sales are only suffering because the increase in digital sales. According to the NPD report, digital download sales trailed closely behind physical box sales (21.3 million vs. 23.5 million respectively). During that same period, PC digital download sales made up to 48% of unit sales and 36% of dollar sales. So while retail sales may be declining, it's not necessarily because of computer video game piracy.

The big problem with trying to correlate X million in illegally downloaded games to X million in lost sales is that it simply doesn't work like that. There is no quantifiable number or study out there that shows a direct correlation between those numbers. So when you see these "studies" that claim piracy costs an industry millions in lost revenue, it's simply a load of made up numbers. In fact the U.S. Government has basically admitted that most piracy estimates are bogus. The Government Accountability Office said that it is "difficult, if not impossible to quantify the economy-wide impacts". What video game publishers should be doing is stop blaming piracy for their lack of sales and look at from a different angle.

See, since a video game publisher can't link a download to a lost sale, they should instead start looking at how they can make piracy work for them. Obnoxious DRM like Ubisoft's-always need to be connected to the internet-only affects the customers who pay for the game. Remove the costs of developing that DRM and accept the fact that people will download your game illegally. Take that saved cost to make the game cheaper or find a way to connect with your fans and give them a reason to buy. Look at indie game developers who embrace the fact that DRM is a failure and still make money from their game (Humble Indie Bundle). How many legitimate users is it ok to inconvenience in order to reduce piracy?" The answer should be none. Fans want to support artists, so who is to say that video game developers can look at experimenting with a new model revolving about a CwF +RtB model. Pair the infinite goods-namely a video game or such- with a scarce good to give more value.

Bottom line, video game piracy does somewhere between zero and slightly nothing in terms of damage to a developer. Think of video game piracy as word of mouth advertising for a game (the best, since it's free); all those "millions" downloading it are going to play it and recommend it to their friends to pass it along. Outwards those others may pay for it, or they may not. But by getting the (hopefully positive) word out, there is a much larger audience to connect with to give a reason to buy the video game. Look at successful crowd sourced projects for movies and tv shows that use places like The Pirate Bay to distribute their shows for free, and then generate money for additional content from fans who want more.

Make something that fans want to support; this means games that aren't rushed out to meet a deadline and buggy as all hell. Times are changing, and video game publishers should change with the times or become extinct like the dinosaurs. They can look at piracy in a different light and how they can use it to their advantage.

“If we’ve done our job right and implemented Battle.net in a great way people will want to be connected while they’re playing the single player campaign so they can stay connected to their friends on Battle.net and earn the achievements on Battle.net. The best approach from our perspective is to make sure that you’ve got a full-featured platform that people want to play on, where their friends are, where the community is. That’s a battle that we have a chance in. If you start talking about DRM and different technologies to try to manage it, it’s really a losing battle for us..”

On the other hand, it is just depressing; Namco Bandai's Olivier Comte sees Ubisoft's always connected DRM as a "good strategy". It's a good strategy if you want to prevent your paying customers from playing their video games that is. Ubisoft has had nothing but problems with their "always on" DRM and it is not a road that should be taken for any video game.

Videogame developers need to realize that onerous DRM does nothing to prevent piracy and only adds to the cost of the game and pisses off people who actually buy. They need to realize that people are going to copy and there is nothing they can do about it. Change your business models and/or provide solid reasons for your potential customers to go out and buy your game. Include in-depth matchmaking, or social tools to stay in touch with friends. Treat your customers like people and they will return the favor.

Good news Everyone! Mac gamers are no longer getting the shaft when it comes to gaming on their Apple of choice. Steam is releasing their digital distribution software for Macs; pretty much the only gaming platform the Mac has seen in years (or maybe ever). Steam for Mac will bring all of the Steamworks tools:copy protection, anti-cheat support, and key-based authentication to Steam community, Steam Cloud, and microtransactions. Will it be enough to convince publishers to convert their games to the Mac OS X platorm?

On the other hand, Valve has a lineup of nearly three dozen games launching with their Steam for Mac software. Valve also plans to release on "subsequent Wednesdays, additional collections of Mac titles will become available, each designed to highlight specific functionalities of Steam on the Mac." The first collection of games will highlight their "Steam Play", meaning games that allow Windows and Mac OS gamers to play together, in harmony. Maybe not in harmony, since most Macs only come with a single button mouse; FURIOUS CLICKING. Good luck with that in Portal Mac gamers.

All of the three dozen games in the Steam for Mac beta are currently available on Windows. Some of the more notable games include LucasArts titles, addicting PopCap games and Telltale's episodic games like Sam & Max and Tales of Monkey Island. Also listed for the Mac gaming pleasure is Valve's popular Team Fortress 2, even though it wasn't mentioned in their press release. Missing from the Steam for Mac lineup is Valve's very own Half Life and Left 4 Dead series, and other Mac-compatible games listed on Steam.

Source Engine performance on a Mac wasn't quite as good as on Windows in tests using the exact same hardware-thanks to Boot Camp-but comes close nonetheless. Not all Macs are created equal and those with the integrated intel graphics chips are in for a very painful surprise if they try to run any of the games. If you have a Mac mini or plastic MacBook made before the tranistion to the GeForce 9400M, run, don't walk, away from trying to play any Source based games. Otherwise, if you have any desktop/notebook from past 2008? good to go!

While I have no problem with Mac gamers finally getting REAL games (You guys almost had Halo.. it would have made me buy a mac to play it!). It boggles my mind that anybody would buy a Mac for soley gaming; a Mac simply doesn't have the price to performance ratio to make it work. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: If you want to play video games on a computer, build a sub-$500 gaming rig and be done with it. Now, if you already have a new Mac, what the hell, go enjoy the Steam for Mac client and come play some TF2!

Edit: Here is a list of games currently available for Mac:
Atlantis Sky Patrol
Bejeweled 2 Deluxe
Bob Came in Pieces
Bookworm Deluxe
Braid
Brainpipe
Chocolatier: Decadence by Design
Chuzzle Deluxe
City of Heroes: Architect Edition
Civilization IV: The Complete Edition
Cooking Dash
Diaper Dash
The Dig
Diner Dash: Hometown Hero
DinerTown Detective Agency
DinerTown Tycoon
Dream Chronicles: The Chosen Child
Escape Rosecliff Island
Fairway Solitaire
Fitness Dash
Football Manager 10
Galcon Fusion
Gemini Lost
Guns of Icarus
Hotel Dash Suite Success
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
KrissX
Loom
Luxor
Luxor 3
Luxor: Mahjong
Machinarium
Mahjong Roadshow
Max and the Magic Marker
My Tribe
The Nightshift Code
Nightshift Legacy: The Jaguar’s Eye
Parking Dash
Peggle Deluxe
Peggle Nights
Portal
Professor Fizzwizzle and the Molten Mystery
Quantz
Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse
Tales of Monkey Island Season 1
Toki Tori
Torchlight
Trijinx: A Kristine Kross Mystery
Unwell Mel
Valarie Porter and the Scarlett Scandal
Wandering Willows
Wedding Dash 2: Rings Around the World
World of Goo
Zenerchi
Zuma Deluxe

If you want to check out the Tron Legacy ARG some more, check out Flynn Lives; from there you can try and get your own Encom Employee badge to access the Encom Employee Intranet page. Encom is the corporation that Flynn worked for in the original movie and has flourished to become a huge company in the sequel Tron Legacy.The Encom Group 7 badges are professionally made and look a bit like this (this is not my badge).

It seems that MekTek FINALLY got through all of the legal hassle of convincing Microsoft that MechWarrior 4 should be free. The problem is that their release of the free MechWarrior 4 is having some serious issues. MekTek's website is still down after being on the wrong side of a mad grab for files. According to Battletech.com, MekTek logged about 100,000 unique hits for MechWarrior 4: Mercanaries before their 'heavy duty' server couldn't take it any more and committed seppuku. You might think "well, if I got the files via a handy external torrent, I'm in the clear, right?" WRONG. It seems that MekTek's auto updater is coded to check their website for some stupid reason to apply patches. So good luck installing the game or patches when their servers are down. (Although they did fix this for any future patches).

If you are still having issues with MekTek, you can use Plan B: Dwell On It has a hadny link & guide to grabbing and installing the game. Then, you just have to let MekTek's MTX launcher do it's deal to patch away the CD checks.

If you do NOT want to deal with MekTek's MTX launcher bullshit (plan C), here is a work around for you. This is done by the very hardworking Retro-Future Rodent on SA. Caveat: This only works with MekTek patches 17-20, but will allow you to bypass MTX completely.

You'll NEED the "mechwarrior4mercenaries.all.to.51.03.01.0017.mtx" file for this, but neither of
the other .mtx patch files are needed.
I'm also including a registry file that you'll need to edit one of line in notepad. Change:
"MTXGamesPath"="E:\\mektek"
to where you've installed mektek. Hopefully with this patch you'll never need to have run MTX,
but anyone who has doesn't want to mess up their installation should change that before opening it.

The rest is simple enough:
Open mechwarrior4mercenaries.all.to.51.03.01.0017.mtx with a program that deals with zips. I use 7zip.
Make a folder somewhere on your hard-drive, I used E:\Mechwarrior.
Copy all the files inside the "base" folder into the folder you just made. This can take a while, you're moving just over 2Gb

Copy all the files and folders from my patch zip into the folder that contains MW4Mercs.exe
Run patch.bat and wait for it to finish. Should only take a minute or so and will inform you as each file is patched.
Copy everything in PATCH and paste it over the contents of your Mechwarrior directory, overwriting files.
Run Mechwarrior4.reg

You should now be patched and ready to play, you can delete /patch/, patch.bat and xdelta. I've done some test installations and it's worked fine, allowing me to get right in, make a player and join a multiplayer server each time.
I only have access to XP Home though so anyone with Vista or 7 may well have to look at the commands in patch.bat and run them manually if it shits itself in either OS, that or give me the money to buy a copy of 7.

Reports are that his patch works on Windows 7, so give it a try and see if it works for you.

I have mirrored the MekTek patch files that Retro-Future Rodent provided. Go forth and enjoy the bounty of MekTek's free MechWarrior 4: Mercenaries (multiplayer or singleplayer).

As always with super restrictive DRM, it's the legit customers that get screwed. Pirates cracked the game before it was even released, although there are still some issues with Assasins Creed (the game downloads bits of data for each level). This DRM also completely destroys any First Sale rights since the game is tied permanently to your Ubisoft account. The game looks super fun, but I will wait to play it on a Xbox 360

I finally get to try out some Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer; I'm still not happy about the lack of dedicated servers but at least I can try it for free. I played the single player on the console at the local game center, but I was unimpressed with much of it: Why helllooo red jam smeared all over the screen.. why couldn't that have gone the route of L4D2 blood smears?

I'm going to give multiplayer a solid try, but I'm not expecting it to change my mind on purchasing Modern Warfare 2. Plus, I'm probably going to get rocked by all the people with their weapons unlocked.

The Gamecrush service costs $6.60 for 500 'credits' that can be used to play a game online with a GIRL or have a video chat. A game session usually lasts from 6 to 10 minutes and leaves enough GameCrush credits for the gamer to tip his PlayDate. GameCrush will also have social tools that allow PlayDates to post profiles complete with picture galleries, video clips, blogs and text chat. PlayDates can make up to $30 or more per hour while having fun playing online games. After a game session is completed, Players rate their gaming experience, and top-rated PlayDates are rewarded with enhanced site promotion and additional benefits.

GameCrush says that the cost of their service equates to something along the lines of buying a girl a drink. Now, you could argue if it is a real girl behind your 'PlayDate', but I suppose the video chat part would sort that out quick. Who knows if this will take off, but I have seen desperate gaming nerds pay for weirder things. That and their public beta was overwhelmed in minutes hints at high demand. How embarrassing would it be to have your 'PlayDate' kick your ass? Hint: Very funny, unless you are into that kind of thing.

If you want to read the GameCrush PR, you can do so here, but try to keep your sanity in check.

So, what's your thoughts on this new 'service' for gamers?

Not to leave anybody hanging, Valve will explain how the Left 4 Dead survivors made it all the way to rural Georgia through a DLC/Expansion for the original L4D. The major SPOILER alert here is that the tagline in the L4D 2 DLC is "No one survives forever" and it has been confirmed that one of the orginal L4D survivors will end up sacrificing his/her self in the events of the L4D campaign DLC. They must have ran out of rescue closets. No idea on who dies, but speculate away.