They will allow you to crack the CSS on a DVD if you need to take out short clips for non-commercial or educational use. You can jailbreak your iPhone to install non-Apple approved software. If you believe your Xbox game has a security flaw, you can crack it for the purpose of investigating and reporting that flaw. If you own any DRM’d eBooks, you can break them for the purpose of feeding them into a text to voice reader.

This is all fantastic news for believers of fair use. Expect Apple, the MPAA and every video game manufacturer to file suit in… – what time is it now?

Recently, Google has been investing somewhere between $100M and $200M in Zynga, after having raised $500M in venture capital. When Google Games launches late this year, Zynga will be a major part of its debut.

According to TechCrunch:

Zynga will be the cornerstone of a new Google Games to launch later this year, say multiple sources. Not only will Zynga’s games give Google Games a solid base of social games to build on, but it will also give Google the beginning of a true social graph as users log into Google to play the games

According to the site, while Google’s investment in Zynga was completed, the actual partnership is still being worked on between the companies.

Google desperately needs this business arrangement to work if Google Games is to succeed. Aside from the stunning array of games Zynga owns, such as Farmville, Mafia Wars, Cafe World and Fishville, Zynga also is the largest customer Paypal services; Google would love to have Zynga going through Google Checkout instead. Zynga is projecting $1B in revenue in fiscal 2011.

We’ll stay on this news as it happens.

In a short document filed in a New York district court, the two companies mutually dismissed the suits with prejudice, barring them from ever filing further suits on the same claims.

“Each party is to bear its own portion of the costs of this litigation, and each party further agrees not to seek any costs or sanctions,” it reads.

The bizarre case began when Take-Two sued 3D Realms for breach of contract after the developer fired most of its staff. Apogee aka 3D Realms counter-sued Take-Two and subsidiary 2K Games, claiming that 2K did not fulfill its contractual duties to develop a separate game called Duke Begins.

So what does this mean for Duke Nukem Forever? Is it forever shelved, or will it be released since both sides came to an agreement and a release of the game can finally be made?

This follows “statements of concern” from Apple and Dell, both of whom also have production lines at Foxconn. Nintendo is the first company to take an active interest in working conditions however.

Neither Microsoft nor Sony have made any announcements on the issue to date. Hopefully a united front among Foxconn customers will turn things around there faster than an exorcist.

PC World did the math and figured out that this is actually a LOWER suicide rate than China as a whole. The Shenzhen plant employs 300,000 people and 10 suicides would equate to a rate of 3.33 per 100,000 employees. The suicide rate in China is reportedly 14 per 100,000 citizens. So while it’s shocking to lose 10 co-workers over the course of a year, it’s also hard for workers in the Western world to comprehend having 300,000 co-workers.

In the wake of this suicide, Foxconn found an interesting recruiting message posted to their website.

Translated to English, the “recruitment” message stated:

Foxconn — We’re Hiring
Are you feeling down today? Do you feel like not living anymore? Do you want to know what it feels like to jump down from China’s model suicide jumping facility? Foxconn provides you the perfect environment to jump.

All the many reasons to jump here have ensured at least one jump per week.

Comprehensive press coverage guaranteed. to ensure your name travels ten thousand miles.

What are you waiting for? Pick up your phone now and join Foxconn.

Be the kickass twelfth jumper.

You can do it.

Hiring hotline: 514514514

For non-Chinese, the number “514″ that is repeated three times in the “hiring hotline” sounds like the Chinese for “I want to die.”

Let us know what you think.

Related article:

• Is Freddy Loose in China? Suicides Plague Foxconn, Exorcist Brought In

“This is an exciting day for all of us at EA Partners and for gamers everywhere,” said David DeMartini, senior vice president and general manager of EA Partners. “Insomniac is renowned for their commitment to quality and their ability to create unique, exciting worlds for gamers to explore. We look forward to help them bring their next blockbuster franchise to the millions of diehard Insomniac fans on PlayStation and the soon to be millions of diehard Insomniac fans on Xbox 360.”

Don’t expect Ratchet & Clank or Resistance on the Xbox 360, however, as Sony owns those IPs. Insomniac is currently working on a new IP for the 360 and PlayStation 3.

Let us know what you think.

This scheduled ban was proposed back in June after a string of allegedly videogame-linked crimes were committed in Germany. Bundestag ministers proposed the ban to rid the nation of the purchase and development of violent video games.

The petition, reportedly 73,000 signatures strong, was taken up to the Committee of Petitions where it proposed more education on the media instead of closing it out entirely with a banhammer. Perhaps influenced by the strength and resolution of this movement, Parliament State Secretary Dr. Herman Kues announced there will be no bans enacted, and the government will instead focus on pushing for more education about the existing PEGI system.

Let us know what you think.

A plant that has seen NINE suicide attempts so far this year, seven of which were successful. The latest victim was found with a bloody knife and multiple stab wounds after falling from the 7th floor of a company dormitory.

This is apparently nothing new at Foxconn either: back in July of 2009 a man killed himself after being questioned over a missing iPhone prototype (looks like Gray Powell dodged a bullet there!)

It’s apparently gotten so bad that Foxconn is now bringing in an exorcist do deal with the “negative incidents”.

Here’s the thing: I’m not naive enough to think that working in a Chinese factory is going to be a cakewalk, but if working for your company is so stressful that it drives 9 of your co-workers to try and kill themselves in suspicious ways (”10 stab wounds – worst case of suicide I ever seen!”) in less than a year, you might have bigger problems that an exorcist cannot solve.

It’s 17 pages long and there’s a lot of good info to be found in there, but the “too long; didn’t read” version goes like this:

Anthony Ventura bought a PS3 around July of 2007 for $499 plus tax. Part of his decision making process to buy a PS3 was based on the availability of the “Other OS” feature which Sony advertised as being available on the system. The lawsuit supports that with ten public statements made by Sony executives promoting the feature and promising to maintain it.

The suit maintains that users who choose to keep their “Other Operating System” will find:

• It will be impossible for users to access the Playstation Network
• It will be impossible to play PS3 games online
• It will be impossible to play new PS3 games
• It will be impossible to watch new Blu-ray videos
• New Blu-ray discs could disable the Blu-ray drive entirely if they contain an AACS Host Revocation List that affects the old software version
• Videos on DTCP-IP media servers will be disabled.

That’s a pretty big price to pay for wanting to keep your favorite Linux distro and it arguably devalues the PS3 to a great extent by eliminating much of the functionality.

Prior to filing the lawsuit Mr. Ventura filed both Better Business Bureau and Federal Trade Commission complaints, neither of which seemed to resolve to his satisfaction. In the lawsuit, the primary complaint is that Sony accepted money for goods then changed the rules after money changed hands. They’re expecting the suit to be worth no less than $5,000,000.

According to Activision:

“Under the terms of the agreement, Activision will have exclusive, worldwide rights to publish and distribute all future Bungie games based on the new intellectual property on multiple platforms and devices… [Bungie] remains an independent company and will continue to make their own intellectual property.”

Bungie has promised an “exciting new IP” they refer to as “Step 7″:

“It’s no secret that while the full might of our studio has focused on making Halo: Reach, another core team, led by our co-founder and studio creative director, Jason Jones, has already begun laying the groundwork to bring our newest universe, stories, and characters to life,” the developer wrote.

“Our Next Big Thing now has a concrete path, leading from our studio to the platforms of our choosing. The business formalities are behind us. Our Constitution remains unchanged. We are still Bungie, still independent, and now we are free to bring our stories to an ever bigger audience.”

“Once the smoke clears, all the pieces will finally be in place for Step 7. Don’t worry, though. We won’t let World Domination go to our heads. We’re gonna keep making kick ass games on our own terms, and since you’ve been so supportive throughout the years, we’d love to bring you along for the ride.”

Microsoft still owns the rights to the Halo franchise, and 343 Industries will continue to shepherd that franchise. This is an extremely important deal for Activision, which is smarting over not only the lawsuit but from the PR nightmare that has ensued. Bungie gets to work on a non-Halo franchise.

Let us know what you think.

According to Shacknews:

Central to the conflict between Blizzard and KeSPA are the intellectual property rights to StarCraft and its upcoming sequel. KeSPA operates tournaments without licensing the game, which is used to generate revenue. Blizzard would like to be paid a fee as another party is profiting off of if its IP.

Blizzard had previously attempted to run its own tournaments through GOMTV invitational tournaments, but KeSPA blocked this by forbidding players from competing in any Blizzard events and being a member of KeSPA. This shut down Blizzard’s sanctioned tournaments.

Adding some spice to the controversy is the fact that KeSPA was implicated in match fixing:

Top players were accused of throwing matches while conspiring with gambling groups to profit. Since the initial story, new information has suggested that KeSPA was aware that some wrongdoing was occurring.

We’ll continue to follow the situation as it evolves.

“A person may not sell or rent a video game that has been labeled as a violent video game to a minor.”

and:

“Any person who violates any provision of this title shall be liable in an amount of up to one thousand dollars ($1,000), or a lesser amount as determined by the court.”

As you can imagine this was immediately challenged by the game industry and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals struck it down in February of 2009 stating:

“The Supreme Court has carefully limited obscenity to sexual content. We decline the state’s invitation to apply the (same) rationale to materials depicting violence.”

Now the Supreme Court has agreed to hear the state’s appeal of that decision, a hearing which will occur sometime after the new session begins in October, 2010.

Things don’t look particularly cheery for the state of California however. In a recent 8-1 decision, the Supreme Court refused to ban so-called “crush” videos in which real life people crush real life defenseless animals to death. If something as repellent as a video showing a woman crushing a kitten to death, actual real life cruelty, is protected speech then there’s absolutely no question that video games, digital fiction violence, will be granted a protected status as well.

Hopefully once the Supreme Court ruling comes down we will see an end to local laws attempting to regulate game sales, laws that have been struck down by the Federal Court system time and time again in Illinois, Louisiana, Washington State, Michigan and Oklahoma.

The chortling from EA and the two developers was loud:

• EA Games head Frank Gibeau: “This is like the time the Red Sox traded Babe Ruth to the Yankees.”
• Vince Zampella: “Respawn Entertainment marks a fresh start for Jason and me. For the past decade we led a great development team and poured our hearts into creating an epic game franchise. We’re very proud of what we built — and proud that so many millions of fans enjoyed those games. Today we hope to do it all over again — open a new studio, hire a great team, and create brand new games with a new partner, EA.”
• Jason West: “We’re excited. Now that the team is in control of the games and brands, we can ensure that the fans are treated as well as they deserve.”

Of course, West and Zampella might want to remember that other developers were just as thrilled to be acquired by Electronic Arts. Just ask Richard Garriott.

The LinkedIn profiles of lead designer Todd Alderman and lead software engineer Francesco Gigliotti have been updated to show that they are no longer working at the Modern Warfare developer (via Kotaku). They were employed at the Activision-owned studio for over eight years and seven years respectively.

This stems from the nasty lawsuit and accusations leveled by Zampella and West on Activision regarding the ownership of the Modern Warfare and Call of Duty IPs; readers can listen to the special Videogame Roundtable podcast laying out all the entire history of the controversy.

Whatever the case, Infinity Ward will most likely be an empty shell by year’s end, if not by July. Let us know what you think.

Related links:

• Activision/Infinity Ward’s Public Soap Opera
• Ex-Infinity Ward Heads Sue Activision
• VGRT Special Episode: Activision Vs. Infinity Ward

A class-action lawsuit against the retailer has been filed in California, claiming that the game boxes claim the content is included, when the code has most likely been used or is missing completely from the second-hand packaging. GameStop’s return policy allows returns within seven days, which the suit claims is not enough time to protect consumers.

However, this lawsuit is as frivolous as many of suits of its ilk are. It’s quite plain that when you purchased a used game, you will not be getting content intended for new purchasers. Dragon Age Origins, cited as an example, clearly states the content is worth $15 for a “full retail purchase”, which a used copy is clearly not. Furthermore, another cited example, Gears of War 2: Game of the Year Edition as text that reads “Includes 19 extra maps and an additional campaign chapter,” with tiny print under that a “Download card included.” When purchasing a used game, you’re grateful when the game comes with a manual, let alone extra stuff that comes with new copies.

It’s the onus of the buyer to ask whether a used game will have the extra content. While GameStop employees are aggressive in pushing used games, the consumer has every right to ask what the $5 off the price of a used recent release entails. There is nothing deceptive or illegal going on – just a lack of intelligence on the part of the consumer.

In other words: caveat emptor. Let the buyer beware.