If any videogame developers still doubted the Anonymous adage “the internet is here,” the explosive protest against Mass Effect 3’s ending that brought the legendary BioWare studio to its knees has left them forever humbled. Since its release this past March, the final act of the acclaimed Mass Effect trilogy sparked ubiquitous fan derision from across the internet, spawning its own grassroots movement known as “Retake Mass Effect” to target BioWare and even independent platforms such as Amazon in their effort to seek out a better resolution to the game’s ending. The passion of this backlash, even when compared with recent…

Starting with Valve releasing Steam as a necessary tie-in product to activate Half-Life 2, videogame companies have developed a habit of using titanic releases to push forward new and controversial forms of digital rights management (DRM). Proponents and PR folks both claim that these will ultimately improve the experience of playing a game, while cynics cry that these are thinly-veiled attempts to quash consumer rights through more aggressive anti-piracy measures. As I said before in my preview of Diablo III, Blizzard has always been a company with an unmistakable sense of its own identity. When fans rebelled against Diablo III’s artistic direction by staging…

Almost twenty years ago, a game developer just getting its first real taste of success released an innovative and darkly beautiful game with a simple premise: click on monsters until they die. Collect the weapons and money they drop. Use this to improve yourself. Then, go on to kill more monsters until you get to the strongest one of all: the devil himself. Wash, rinse, repeat. The game was called Diablo, and with it, Blizzard Entertainment helped change modern videogames. But when the game came out in 1996, the company was still in its infancy. This was before Starcraft was…

In case you missed it: BIoshock Infinite was delayed until February 2013. Insomniac announced its new project, Outernauts.  BioWare lost some subscribers from Star Wars: The Old Republic. Watch out, Call of Duty. Angry Birds just reached the one billion mark. Dead Space 3 will feature co-op. See you on the other side.