EA and Maxis have spoken up about the impending closure of three games featured on social network Facebook: Sims Social, Simcity Social and Pet Society. All of these games will no longer be available as of 14th June this year. But should this really surprise anyone? Free to play games …

Considering I've been running  a set of Razer Mako speakers for the past few years, it's obvious I'm a fan of odd shaped sound setups. With that in mind, my interest is certainly peaked by the Edifier Predator 2.1 speaker system which comes heavily inspired by an unnamed sci-fi universe …

Being the dominant search engine for over a decade has seen Google face-off against many commissions for potential anti-competitiveness practices. If you're on top, this is bound to happen. Now though Google has agreed with a regulator ruling, that suggested it was a little covert about links that sent people to …

I'm a big fan of retro gaming. Not only does it let you get a good dose of nostalgia, but it's a great reminder that a game doesn't need to be the latest and greatest AAA offering to be great – there are games made over 20 years ago that …

Unfortunately we all saw this coming. While Hilco swooped in just over a week ago to save HMV from disappearing forever, it was very likely that the unprofitable locations would be shut down and this would inevitably lead to job losses. Now the announcement has been made: Hilco is dumping …

Microsoft suffered some problems with its Xbox Live platform over the weekend, with downtime that caused problems for people wanting to play online as well as access accounts with partner services and game saves. While most users are now back to issue free gaming, the outage highlights further problems with …

Nintendo has announced that several features from the original Wii, are set to shut down on 28th June, bringing an end to their seven year lifespan and further encouraging people to move over to its newer offerings on the Wii U – at least that's got to be the intention. The …

A Twitch streamer by the name of ZilianOP, who has claimed for two years to be wheelchair bound, had his lies come tumbling down upon him during a recent stream where he got up and walked away from the camera. Since he elicited donations, somewhat based around his faux disability, Twitch …

Taking a quick break from tech to look at something equally awesome – dinosaurs – palaeontologists working in China have uncovered embryos from nearly 200 million years ago, some containing unfossilised organic matter, making it the oldest such material found of any land-based vertebrate. The petrified embryos entered the fossilised state at different …

Twitter's not-so-secret music app is set to launch today according to some, following on from several unplanned leaks by random people give early access. The app works by suggesting tracks and artists to users based on several factors, including who they follow. The social blogging network has tried to keep …

The Office of Fair Trading is set to investigate what it describes as “aggressive” in-app purchases, especially in games aimed at children, following on from several instances where kids playing on parents' phones has resulted in bills that are thousands of pounds deep. “We are concerned that children and their …

You'll need to shell out £20 for the privilege of reserving what at the moment must be the most anticipated of the next-gen consoles, the PS4, with Asda expecting it to be available to pick up some time within 2013. Despite this release date suggestion however, Asda has noted that this is …

Megaupload founder and legally embattled Kim Dotcom, has found himself almost at the top of the Time's 100 most influential people list, beating out giant names like President Barack Obama (by almost 10x the number of votes), North Korea's Kim Jong Un and the gamer's favourite Markus “Notch” Persson. At …

Yesterday saw DFC Intelligence, a video game statistics and research firm, release a list of figures showing DotA 2 as the most played “core” pc game. Riot Games disagrees however and has cited publicly available statistics to back up the fact that League of Legends, not DotA 2, is the …

Adam Orth, the Microsoft creative director that a few days ago posted tweets that seemed to sarcastically suggest anyone complaining about always-on DRM was an idiot and should just “#getonwithit#, no longer works for Microsoft, having resigned his position. It isn't known at this moment if he resigned by choice …

We've been reporting on Bitcoin's value explosion over the past couple of months, but for the past few days it's been tumultuous at best. Yesterday saw the highest Bitcoin value ever, topping out at around $266 per Bitcoin, but this was the final slog in Bitcoin's uphill sprint as it quickly tumbled …

League of Legends is a big deal these days, with Esports, plushies, clothing and of course, the game itself, but there's always room for one more product. With that in mind, Addam, a username with no other designation, has created 3D renderings of League of Legends characters, in lego. He's …

The PirateBay has been a permanent part of the internet for a long time now, but despite this, its domain hasn't been quite so stationary. We saw it go from PirateBay.org to PirateBay.se back in 2012 and now it's set to evolve into its next iteration: Piratebay.GL. This comes because …

Everything Everywhere, the horribly named merged company of Orange and T-Mobile, has pledged to double the speed of available 4G internet to mobile customers by this summer, but unfortunately only in a handful of cities. As it currently stands, 4G data speeds are averaging around the 10Mbit mark. With this …

While EA Games might once again have been voted the worst company in America – if it had stood strong against Zynga, perhaps the latter would have taken that honour – not everyone agrees. Bioware co-founder Greg Zeschuk said in an interview that EA gives a surprising amount of freedom, “enough rope …

Ubisoft's hyped Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon spin off, has found its way into the wild on torrent sites and through the official Uplay service, after Ubisoft's servers were hacked, opening up free game downloads to those responsible. Some are pointing the finger at the Russians for this one, with …

While it's not often you see someone making their way through the ghost town that is MySpace, one user has found himself in hot water after hijacking his ex-girlfriend's account and posting revealing pictures of her, along with derogatory messages – he's now been found guilty of several criminal charges. …

While it's been known for a while that New Zealand's intelligence agency GCSB (Government Communication Security Bureau) spied on Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom without legal precedent, it turns out that it may have done so in more than 80 different cases, highlighting the need for further regulation and monitoring of …

Returning from Games Developer Conference 2013, Wolfire's CEO and lead programmer, David Rosen learned a lot about animation. He's been breaking down some of the big studio's lessons over the past week and today's look-in is to do with the differences between first person and third person and animation – …

Rod Ferguson, one of the biggest names behind the recent release of Irrational's hit, story driven shooter, Bioshock Infinite, has announced his departure from the company, less than a year after accepting the position. Having previously worked on Gears of War at Epic Games, Ferguson applied for the job at …

Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith, Jay and Silent Bob, the ambiguously gay duo, however you refer to them, the lifelong pals have been drafted in by marketing at Warner Bros, to help promote the new DC beat 'em up, Injustice: Gods Among us. In the short trailer, they argue over …

Facebook has begun a trial of a new system that will see you charged a fee when you message a celebrity, with prices ranging from a few pence all the way up to over £10 for some of the more high profile names. This beta run is being conducted by …

If you've ever ordered from online PC part sellers before, they usually know what they're doing when it comes to sending through full systems or big orders, packaging everything up nicely so it arrives in perfect condition. However when you're making a small order, it can suck paying that full …

A few separate sources are confirming some very specific information about Microsoft's next-gen console, suggesting that it won't be called the 720, or Durango, but in-fact, just Xbox – taking the John Rambo and Rocky Balboa route – and will be revealed for the first time on 21st May, a few weeks …

A new trojan has been discovered that is being spread through innocuous looking Skype messages, giving ‘hackers' control of your machine. Once they do so however, they aren't creating a botnet, or stealing credit card details, but making you part of a distributed bitcoin mining network. Those hit with the …