What in the world is going on? Gaming companies are really starting to wisen up. Know I know that Valve has always been pretty switched on but it’s always good to hear news like this. You see, according to Jason Holtman from Valve, a lot of pirates are playing illegal copies of games because they just don’t have proper access …

You will remember that earlier this year the Internet was up in arms because their latest title, Spore, was going to be using the much criticised SecuROM DRM to prevent piracy. People were upset because they could only install the game 3 times before having to phone EA customer support for new keys, now I honestly am not sure why …

This is quite a shocker of a story, apparently that great new game from 2D Boys (World of Goo) currently has a 90% piracy rate with over 500 people seeding the game on torrents. Apparently they are still keeping their heads above water but seriously that is just not right. Last Updated: November 14, 2008

A raid conducted by law enforcement officials in Mexico’s San Juan de Dios Market seized over 20 tons of contraband, including video games and video game accessories. Executed by Mexico’s Procuraduría General de la República and Agencia Federal de Investigación, the raid uncovered some 91,200 illegal game copies, 130,000 game cover inserts, and 3,200 empty game boxes in booths suspected …

As you may know by now I hate piracy, I feel it is just as bad as walking into CNA and stealing a game of the shelf and I am all for pirates being caught and punished. However I never expected any country to take it as seriously as France seems to be. According to a new law that is …

Not too long ago, we reported that Gears of War 2 had been leaked and was already available for download on the internet. A tip has come in today, telling us that a local, with the incredibly elegant gamertag: Balsak66 was already spotted playing Gears of War 2 last night while connected to Xbox Live. A damn shame that some members of our local gaming community are supporting piracy and for all we know there are more although some of them may have actually made some sort of effort to hide their crime. Piracy really is starting to become a serious problem in the console gaming industry and if we support it then we are going to slowly kill off the very thing that we all have in common, games. More after the jump. Come on guys, be a man (or woman) and do the right thing. Wait the wait and fork out the cash for the game that so many of us have been waiting for for such a long time. PC gaming is already suffering with Crytek announcing that they will no longer be creating games exclusively for PC as well as Epic Games announcing that they will not be releasing a port of Gears of War 2. Gaming has just become the new "Hollywood" and already so many people are making such an active effort to destroy it by pirating games.

Capcom have confirmed to IGN that Street Fighter IV will be releasing this winter (our summer). What it is interesting is that the PC version is only going to be released after the console version. Now, is this only because they will need to port it over to the PC (Don't they have a "export from Xbox 360 to PC" button?), or is it because they are pulling an EndWar maneuver and releasing it later to avoid piracy. We have no confirmation as yet but will follow up when we hear more.

You know... this is starting to get out of hand. Just last week I reported that Fallout 3 had already been leaked out onto the internet and now, Far Cry 2 and Gears of War 2 have joined them. The image above is actually from what seems to be a Gamestop manager and is not linked directly to the leaked games. (read more about them below). How does it feel to know that a whole group of pirate scumbags are already playing the games that you have been waiting for for so long. To make it worse, the leaching bastards didn't even pay for them. More after the jump. What kind of idiot gets a copy of a game and then actually dedicates some of his time to ripping it and uploading it to the internet. It has been reported that Gamestop managers had already received their copies of the game and now this happens. If it isn't this then it's game reviewers. Before we know it, sites like us are only going to receive review copies of games AFTER their release dates to stop idiots like that from getting it out onto the net, either that or they will need to start adding some sort of system and/or unique ID onto review copies to stop people from leaking games. Interestingly enough, it seems to be the Xbox 360 games leaking and not the PC ones. We all have to stand together and realise that we are only damaging ourselves. If you can't afford the game then you can't play it and that's that. There is a reason that we don't all drive Italian sports cars.