Earlier reports suggested that, due to Activision and Vivendi's merger into industry behemoth Activision Blizzard, some staff redundancies would result in more than a few lost jobs. New reports reveal that staff layoffs are coming, and Vivendi's UK branch will bear the brunt of the burden.

GamesIndustry.biz reports that "the majority of the Vivendi team, which oversees the Sierra games label among other things, will face job losses." Some senior team members will be invited to re-apply for new roles within the company. How generous.

Furthermore, a number of upcoming Sierra titles have been under close scrutiny since the Activision Blizzard merger and may not see eventual release dates. Specific details such as which titles might be permanently vaulted have not been revealed.

Since Flagship Studios' staff exodus, the fate of Hellgate: London, the company's debut title, has been uncertain. Some rumors suggest that Hellgate has been re-acquisitioned by Comerica, an American bank who granted Flagship a sizeable loan. The game's forums went offline last week, effectively silencing the game's vocal community.

Now, quite unexpectedly due to the forums supposedly being offline, a recent forum post on the official Hellgate forums suggests that Namco Bandai will be stepping in to ensure that the game's servers are able to breathe without their current life support.

"I know everyone is looking for an announcement, and we'd love to make one," reads the post, which appears to have been made by an official Namco Bandai representative, "but right now, many things are in flux and we don't have all the information yet."

Though brief, the post suggests that an official announcement regarding Namco Bandai's position on Hellgate is forthcoming.

As far back as gamers can remember, each game has belonged to a specific genre, and gamers who enjoy certain genres are subsequently categorized into types of players. Traditionally, the two categories have been core, or "hardcore," and casual.

According to Big Fish Games, the world's largest distributor of casual games, that sort of categorization is narrow-minded and inaccurate. Big Fish founder and chief strategy officer Paul Thelen has revealed new researching demonstrating that, due to the variety of demographics, game genres, and platforms available in the U.S., 14 distinct gamer categories exist.

The study involved surveying 3,000 individual U.S.-based gamers. Those results were matched against different demo- and psychographics, as well as an assortment of game mechanics. The resulting 14 gamer classifications were spread across 39 different genres, which certainly does call into question the time-honored "core" and "casual" archetypes.

To read more about the study and its results, surf over to the source link.

Electronic Arts has been putting more and more efforts into making new original games like Army of Two and the upcoming Mirror's Edge, Spore and Dead Space. So it makes sense that EA would like to see some of these properties on movie and TV screens. Today the publisher announced that they have signed a deal with the Hollywood talent agency UTV to help them do just that.

EA hopes to ramp up film and TV shows based on their game titles with the help of UTV. Even thought EA has a ton of games that could be turned into other media properties they only have a few of these kind of deals in development. These include a movie based on The Sims at Fox and a MySims animated TV series at Film Roman. There's also a Dead Space animated movie from Starz/Film Roman that will be released alongside the game this October.

The 2008 edition of the E3 Media and Business Summit last week was pretty much slammed by many top gaming publisher executives including the CEO of Electronic Arts. Many felt the invite only event had too little news and not enough attention to warrant it's continuation next year without major changes.

Gamespot contacted the show's organizers the Electronic Software Association who confirmed that a 2009 edition of the show "will occur." However, the ESA could be making at least some alterations to the show next year, saying, "As we do every year, we're beginning the process of surveying exhibitors and attendees to determine potential changes to the Summit." Will we return to some kind of larger trade show like event or perhaps even a consumer event a la PAX or Tokyo Game Show? Could we even see the large scale return of booth babes? Stay tuned.

Though mostly conjecture at this point, a perhaps overly-speculating Kotaku writer believes a PC version of Silicon Knights' Too Human, an action game developed for Xbox 360 action game, may eventually find its way to Windows desktops.

Kotaku examined the OFLC's (Office of Film and Literature Classification) database and unearthed two ratings for Too Human: the first, dated May 30, was rated MA 15+; the other, dated June 18, carries a slightly less harsh rating of M. Upon contacting Microsoft, Kotaku learned that "each rating is indeed based on a different build."

More interesting is the "Multiplatform" classification tagged to each of the rated versions. Because Silicon Knights is contracted to develop Too Human exclusively for Microsoft, a PlayStation 3 version of the game is unlikely. Might a PC version be on the horizon?

Alongside their announcement that all Games for Windows LIVE Gold membership features will be free effective immediately (and retroactively for games such as Halo 2), Microsoft also discussed the upcoming DirectX 11 upgrade to their game development API (Application Programming Interface).

Fortunately, unlike the Windows Vista-exclusive features of DirectX 10, DX 11 will offer full support for Vista and all future iterations of the Windows operating system. Full compatibility with all DX 10 and 10.1 features is also expected.

On the technical side, DirectX 11 will also add increased multi-threading resources to allow machines with multiple processes to take better advantage of certain titles. New compute shader technology will be available for developers to one day use a system's GPU as a parallel processor, and tessalation, which, according to the press release Big Download received via email, "blurs the line between super high quality pre-rendered scenes and scenes rendered in real-time," will also be available.

No information regarding a release date for DirectX 11 was made available, though most don't expect its release until sometime in 2009.

GamePolitics has confirmed that New York Governor David Patterson has signed a video game bill passed by the Senate and Assembly into law. According to a press release received by GamePolitics, the bill, among others, is directly aimed at protecting children. Specifically, the video game bill "establishes an advisory council to conduct a study on the connection between interactive media and real-life violence in minors exposed to such media."

Additionally, the bill also mandates that all video games must feature parental lock-out features by 2010, as well as all retail outlets disclose video game ratings obtained from the industry's ratings system. This particular effort is most likely to cease perpetuation of retailers' reliance on parents to view a game's rating, which is always displayed on the title's packaging.

Obviously concerned with the government treading on their turf, the Entertainment Software Association has issued a response, using Senior VP of Communications Richard Taylor as a mouthpiece. Collectively, the ESA sees the bill as an intrusion that "has ignored legal precedent, common sense and the wishes of many New Yorkers." The ESA believes the bill will end up costing taxpayers even more money, and will "impose unconstitutional mandates for activities and technologies that are already voluntarily in place."

Furthermore, Taylor raises a good point by asserting that the bill unfairly singles out the video game industry out of other forms of entertainment. Too true: Target ceased sales of Rockstar's Manhunt 2 last fall due to gratuitous violence, yet continued selling the Saw movie trilogy.

Taylor closes the ESA's reply by postulating the future of entertainment censorship. Could the government next turn to movies and the oft-censored book? "One wonders where this overreach by government in New York will end," he writes.

Ever since Lance Armstrong stopped kicking everyone's butt year after year in the Tour de France, the only news about professional cycling that reaches the U.S. these days is the doping scandals. Even now, with the ToD in full swing, doping scandals continue to rock the sport. So why not give a virtual try at managing a professional cycling team the old fashion way -- with blood, sweat and tears.

Cyanide Studio and Focus Home Interactive have made the demo for Pro Cycling Manager 2008 - Tour de France edition available. The 760 MB demo puts players in charge of the Euskaltel team as they try to win the Tour de France's 16th stage: Cuneo – Jausiers. Your team is beginning its last week of competition before the final charge towards finish line at the Champs-Élysées. Unfortunately your team stinks (probably because none of your riders are using performance enhancing durgs) and has yet to win a single stage. Needles to say the sponsors are getting a bit irked by your lack of Lance Amrstrong-ness. So as the team's Director of Sports you must guide your toeam through the demo's 157.4 km mountain stage to their much needed first victory.

The demo also offers a tutorial mode as well as a track cycling event called a Keirin race, which pits you against six riders racing at nearly 50 kph for three laps. Download the demo now from Big Download!

It's not exactly a shock but today Microsoft has officially announced it is doing away with the fees for the so called "Gold" features for its Games for Windows Live platform. All games that have Games for Windows Live as part of its interface can now use the features like the TruSkill matchmaking, voice and text chat, friends list and cross-platform multiplayer for selected Xbox 360 games for free. Previously those features cost $50 a year to use (they were free if you already had a subscription to Xbox Live). This change affects all current and future PC games that use Live

Microsoft also announced plans to launch a Games for Windows Marketplace feature sometime this fall. Presumably similar to the Xbox 360's Xbox Live Marketplace, this will be a location where people can download both free and paid games along with demos, trailers and other content. Microsoft has also announced plans to make the actual Games for Windows interface more "PC friendly", which presumably means it will look less than the Xbox 360 UI it currently has. Big Download will have a chat with a Microsoft rep about these changes later this week.

[via email press release]

GameTap, the broadband entertainment network brought to you by Turner Broadcasting System, just announced a long-term partnership with THQ. The joint effort includes worldwide subscription play and digital download rights for a wide selection of games for Windows PC. Plus, some of THQ games will be made available for free to play on GameTap's ad-supported website.

GameTap will now feature titles from the THQ and ValuSoft catalogues, including critically acclaimed games such as Company of Heroes, Warhammer 40K, Red Faction, Supreme Commander, Titan Quest, Saints Row 2, PuzzleQuest and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl.

[via email press release]

After having the current version of E3 getting slammed left, right and center, it's a tad refreshing to see a game industry spokesperson state that there is still a need for the show. That person is Bethesda Softworks' PR head Pete Hines. In a chat with TechRadar UK he states, "I'm a firm believer that we need an E3."

That doesn't mean he believes the current step-up for the show (an invite-only event of 5,000 at the LA Convention Center) is the way to go for future E3s. Hines states, "It either needs to go back to an improved version of last year (invite only but in several Santa Monica hotels), or something closer to what it was but perhaps with some controls and boundaries put on it so the bigger companies aren't strapped with trying to outdo each other with booths the size of a small city." It's not likely that E3 will return to the Santa Monica set-up but perhaps a return to the good old days of larger booths (and booth babes?) could happen.

[Via Joystiq]

It looks like UK based developer Splash Damage is bringing in some new team members from outside the original group to help out with their future projects. The developer just announced that it has brought in former Ubisoft member Olivier Leonardi as its Art Director; he previously worked on Rainbow Six Vegas 2 and Prince of Persia. Also brought into the Splash Damage fold is former Criterion Games member Chris Sweetman as Audio Director, former BioWare member Tim Appleby as Lead Character Artist and producer Chris Dawson who has worked on games like Driver, Evil Genius and Test Drive.

Splash Damage's has worked mostly with id Software for most of its life, first on the free Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory game (still a popular game online) and more recently on the multiplayer shooter Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. It recenty signed a deal with Bethesda Softworks to work on a new original unnamed action game.

Your daily wrap-up of the hottest stories in PC gaming in the last 24 hours.

	E308: Dark Void Impressions The first part of Dark Void plays out they way anyone would expect an action shooter would. There isn't much to help the game stand out without the benefit of an upgraded jet pack. Until then, the player moves through like most other shooters, picking up new and inventive weapons along with ammo while picking off waves of incoming soldiers along the way.
	E308: Damnation Impressions Going vertical is one of the more prominent themes of this year's E3, but before players fly around the Dark Void using a jet pack, they might be scaling the buildings of Damnation. Damnation takes place in an alternate history United States, where the industrial revolution took a radically different turn. The result is a 1900's America that looks both new and familiar at the same time.
	Left 4 Dead box art revealed Valve Software VP of marketing Doug Lombardi has released the official box art for developer Turtle Rock Studios' upcoming Left 4 Dead, a squad-based shooter that will pit humans in a fight for survival against legions of zombies. Though we find the box art to be stylish yet simple, snazzy yet unassuming, we find ourselves hesitant to award the art a thumbs-up.
	Portal: Still Alive already available on PC Keyboard-and-mousers up in arms over the recent announcement that Xbox Live Arcade would be receiving exclusive Portal content in the form of Portal: Still Alive need not fret: apparently the forthcoming bonus content has already been alive on the PC for quite some time.
	Frogster unveils strong MMO line-up Players looking for a variety of themes in the prolific MMO genre need not look further than Frogster, a PC game publisher with an emphasis on virtual worlds. Due out during the second half of 2008 are StoneAge 2, Runes of Magic, and The Chronicles of Spellborn, which should complement Frogster's existing portfolio of casual MMO titles.

Game developer Midway has not had the best of financial times lately. The company hasn't been profitable in some time and it dumped its most recently CEO David Zucker several months ago. Today the publisher announced plans to shut down its Los Angeles based development studio.

Unlike most recently shut downs of dev studios, the majority of the team members are being offered new positions at Midway's San Diego offices (although its likely some will not take Midway up on the offer). This move includes the entire development team for Midway's development team TNA Impact, the console wrestling title that's due for release this fall. Midway plans the transfer to be complete by September 30.