A night club in Malaysia called “Blackmagic” has an interesting and familiar logo, one that you may have seen before, but where? Oh, that’s right, on a game called Skyrim that sold 5 or so million copies worldwide. Apparently the owners of the club never expected anyone to recognize the logo of a best-selling and widely talked about video game. Bethesda lawsuit coming in 3… 2…

Thanks to Torrey for the tip! More pics here.

Sneaky Zebra Productions brings us this Mass Effect fan film, and just like Mass Effect, you get a choice at the outcome of the story. They’ve clearly put in a lot of work into the project, and the result is quite impressive, with decent costume and CG work, and at the end, you get to chose your path and move on to the next video and follow the story, with two alternate endings.

Here are some never before seen images of an exhibit that ran back in 2010 for the 30th Anniversary of Pac-Man. The gallery, originally held at 3331 Arts Chiyoda just outside of Akihabara, Japan, showcased absolutely everything imaginable featuring the little Namco mascot we know and love.

Hit the jump below to see a full gallery of items Pac-Man related, such as pens, pencilboxes, games, shirts, cabinets, and much much more. READ ON »

Charlie Sheen has been going through difficult times lately, having been kicked off his TV show, and dealing with various drugs and hooker-related problems. But if you ask Mr. Sheen, all is fine — he’s still winning.

The guys over at Reddit unearthed an old science fiction B-movie starring Sheen, a movie called The Arrival. Sheen not only plays a scientist who discovers alien life (hint hint), but he looks remarkably like Half Life protagonist Gordon Freeman. Considering the movie was released in 1996, it could very well be the inspiration for Gordon Freeman — development of Half Life started in 1996.

Darksiders 2 is almost upon us and for those craving even more from the Darksiders world, THQ has announced that you’ll be able to sink your teeth into an upcoming novel based on the universe. The novel, called Darksiders: The Abomination Vault, is written by Ari Marmell and is a prequel to the games. The novel will be out in May.

It seems there can’t be a single week without Zynga copying a popular Facebook game and releasing its own clone. Last week the makers of Tiny Tower accused Zynga of copying their game and releasing it as “Dream Heights”, and now developer Buffalo Studios points out to VentureBeat just how similar Zynga’s new bingo game is to Buffalo’s Bingo Blitz. They released an infographic showing the similarities, which you can see above.

By ruthlessly copying games and concepts, Zynga has become one of the most hated game developers over the past year. And rightfully so — the large company employs thousands of people and still manages to steal creative ideas from much smaller developers. Tiny Tower, for instance, only has 3 developers, while Zynga’s Dream Tower may have had hundreds working on the project.

Worse, Zynga has been very open about how they do business, with its CEO reportedly telling employees, “I don’t want fucking innovation. You’re not smarter than your competitor. Just copy what they do and do it until you get their numbers”.

By now, you should know that it’s possible to create virtually anything in Minecraft, no scratch that, it’s possible to create everything in Minecraft. Including re-creating Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

The project is called “Hyrulecraft”, and its goal is to recreate the entire world of Zelda: Ocarina of Time inside of Minecraft, complete with NPCs, dungeons, etc. Fore more details on Hyrulecraft and how to play it, check out this run down by GenGame.

If you’re going to get a lower back tattoo, also known as a tramp stamp, you might as well do it properly. Like the female in the picture above, sporting what is arguably the best Zelda tattoo ever. Also, those pants make no sense. Also also: If you’re interested in knowing who the girl is, she verified the picture on Reddit.

There are petitions these days trying to get developer From Software to port Dark Souls to the PC. The petitions have garnered hundreds of thousands of signatures, but it’s still unlikely we’ll ever see Dark Souls on PC. Why? Because PC is a platform with 90% piracy rate.

The majority of PC gamers will never pay for their games, no matter how many Steam sales Valve has, no matter how much the game are marked down, no matter how easy and convenient and DRM-free it is: it’ll never be better than free. Last year, a whopping 4 million PC gamers pirated Crysis 2. When time comes for Crysis 3, which platform do you think developer Crytek will focus on? PC or consoles? Even Portal 2, which is made by Valve, a company with a God-like status among gamers, was pirated more than 3 million times on the PC.

“If you didn’t pay for it, you stole it. Doesn’t matter if its a physical copy, or a digital copy — the developer won’t get paid for their work.”Developers like Valve can afford to put out great and expensive PC titles: they have an established fan base who are going to buy the game no matter what. But when it comes to small developers, and especially first time developers, it’s a very different story, as Bohemia Interactive showed last year with the release of ArmA 2: for every 3 people who bought the game, 100 pirated it. The head of Bohemia said the statistic was “really worrying for us as a mid-sized, independent, PC-oriented developer”.

Politically correct PC gamers insist that services like Steam and lower prices are the solution to game piracy, but Steam has been around for a few years now, as have other digital distribution systems. Has PC gaming piracy gone down? Not at all. Granted, publishers share some of the blame: restrictive DRM solutions have certainly driven away some legitimate gamers. But before you start praising “non-DRM” solutions, know that there are no true “non-DRM” services. Steam is a DRM service. If you don’t believe that, try and give one of you Steam games to a friend. Try and sell the game that you bought and rightfully own — oh, you can’t. That’s because you don’t own the games in your Steam library, technically you pay for a “subscription” to them.

With those kinds of numbers, why should From Software make Dark Souls for the PC platform? If 9 out of 10 gamers will pirate the game, that’s not a good business proposition. And when multiplatform titles do get a PC release, it’s usually in the form of a bad console port. That’s where the hypocrisy lies: elitist PC gamers complain about bad ports and developers not caring enough about the PC platform. But then they pirate the game anyway. At least 9 out 10 times. The tired old excuse that “online piracy isn’t theft, because it’s just a copy” is bullshit. If you didn’t pay for it, you stole it. Doesn’t matter if its a physical copy, or a digital copy — the developer won’t get paid for their work.

“If I was a developer, would I spend my resources developing for a platform with 10% piracy rate, or 90% piracy rate?”For the record, I don’t own a console. I’m a PC gamer. And all but one (Battlefield 3) of my 40+ games were bought on Steam. But unlike many other legitimate PC gamers, I don’t complain when a developer decides not to release a PC version. Or when they decide to spend most of their resources on the console versions. Nor I don’t complain about bad PC ports that are released years later. I understand their reasons. If I was a developer, would I spend my resources developing for a platform with 10% piracy rate, or 90% piracy rate?

Face it, we PC gamers don’t deserve any more exclusive titles. We don’t deserve proper PC versions or ports. We don’t deserve a truly non-DRM system. By pirating 9 out of 10 games, we have’t earned the right to any of those things.

Sincerely,
A PC gamer.

Flickr user “Nick Brick” knows a thing or two about LEGOs, judging by the looks of his creations. The man specializes in recreating Halo weapons in LEGO with astounding accuracy and visual detail. For instance, the Halo Reach SRS99 rifle, pictured above. Be sure to check out more photos of his full arsenal on Flickr.