Much like Prince becoming the "Love Symbol" back in better times (the mid-'90s), Namco Bandai Holdings announced plans to spin off its existing internal development teams into a separate company (that is also still totally part of Namco, by the way). The new company will be named "Namco Bandai Studio" and will comprise the the approximately 1,000 employees who are already part of Namco.

The organizational change was spurred by Namco's interest in speedier dev times and tighter cohesion between disparate dev teams. The changeover won't go into effect until April 2, so you've still got at least a month to snag some classic Namco Bandai Holdings collectibles* while you still can!

(*Note: Those don't actually exist. Unless you're a crazy person, of course.)

The Steam forums and database was hacked in November, and Valve is still investigating the breach. In a new note to Steam users, Valve head Gabe Newell announced that "it is probable that the intruders obtained a copy of a backup file with information about Steam transactions between 2004 and 2008." The file contained user names and email addresses, and encrypted billing addresses and credit-card information, but it did not include passwords, Newell said.

So far there has been no evidence that credit cards or billing addresses have been compromised from the attack, but Steam users should pay close attention to their accounts and keep Steam Guard on, Newell said. Read Gabe's full update below, which has been sent to all Steam gamers as well.

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Vodafone's got a quite a deal for UK customers looking to pick up a 3G PlayStation Vita. The store is currently offering a free 4GB Vita memory card with the £280 purchase of a 3G Vita. Furthermore, if customers "top off" their 3G sim card for £5, Vodafone will throw in a copy of Wipeout 2048 and 250MB of mobile data for a month.

The memory card is bound to come in handy, given that the proprietary cards are required for all PSN downloads and many Vita titles -- like Wipeout 2048, for example.

The co-op-centric Star Trek title unveiled at last year's E3 has found itself a publisher. Namco Bandai will be "co-publishing" and distributing the Digital Extremes-developed space romp alongside Paramount Digital Entertainment sometime during the first quarter of 2013.

The Q1 2013 window puts this immediately before the May 17 theatrical release of the next Abrams Trek film -- marketing synergy that may explain the game's quiet delay from its original 2012 release window. We like Abrams' take on the Trek universe just fine, but we can't help but wish for someone to throw this much money at remaking Star Trek 25th Anniversary for the NES.

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After our special DICE episode yesterday--which you should totally go listen to right now--the regular show is back. Richard, JC and Ben discuss the week's news in the first segment, and some big things are afoot. Good news: Tim Schafer and the crew at Double Fine have crowd-sourced more than $1 million for a new adventure game. Bad news: Those looking for a way to play their PSP UMD titles on PS Vita will have to repurchase them.

In the second segment, Richard is joined by GameSpot's Kevin VanOrd and Game Informer's Philip Kollar to discuss Big Huge Games's sprawling role-playing game Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. Spoiler: It's pretty good.

Part 1 (1:03) - The news
Part 2 (24:24) - Review Roundtable: Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

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Host: Richard Mitchell (@SenseiRAM)
Guests: Kevin VanOrd (@fiddlecub) and Philip Kollar (@pkollar)
Producer: Jonathan Downin (@jonathandownin - Game Thing Daily)
Production Coordinator: Richard Mitchell
Music: Trash80 and Broke for Free

View the full guest list, news topics, and stream the show after the break.

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We've had assurances of The Last Guardian's continued existence, but in the absence of empirical proof we could always use one more. 1UP received a rather authoritative one from Sony Worldwide Studios head Shuhei Yoshida at DICE, who said he's "been seeing it."

Yoshida reports that, after leaving Sony and becoming a contractor, producer Fumito Ueda continues working on the game as normal. His departure was "an arrangement so he could focus on the creative side," Yoshida said. "But his work and his presence on that team never changed, so it was just more a contractual rearrangement, and that was taken [by many] as 'he left.'"

Ueda is still in the office, "probably one of the people who works the longest hours," Yoshida said. Progress is still taking place on The Last Guardian, "but slow progress."

Like the sun rising in the East or our daily tribute to the almighty caffeine deity, we've come to expect writing a post at least once a week announcing yet another award for Skyrim. This week is no different, with Skyrim taking top honors at the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences 15th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards in Las Vegas last evening.

The studio took home five awards in total for the dragon-infested, open-world RPG, alongside fellow multiple award winners Uncharted 3 and Portal 2. We've dropped a full list of winners after the break, but before you head there allow us to be outraged for you that Skyward Sword didn't win any awards. Outrage! How could they? Etc.

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Sony has confirmed development of LittleBigPlanet Karting. The news comes via a tweet from Sony's PlayStation account, which states quite simply the game is in development and that the publisher hopes to share more information "soon."

Reports were circulating earlier this week -- though they have since been pulled -- that the game would feature PlayStation Move support and a Move racing wheel peripheral, perhaps in the style of Nintendo's massively successful Mario Kart Wii.

Whatever becomes of the final product, the existence of LittleBigPlanet Karting is an interesting development considering that Sony already has a flagship kart racer, Modnation Racers (pictured).

PlayStation Blog Europe reintroduces us to two Vita games/apps that you might have forgotten about: Frobisher Says and t@g. Frobisher Says is an absurd microgame collection in which up to 8 players pass a Vita around and take on weird tasks assigned by the title character. Examples include "poke an otter with a stick", "deliver my pudding on a toy train", and "smile at some ladies (but not at the badgers!)" As all minigame collections do, this uses all of the Vita's control features.

T@g is an AR app that lets you leave graffiti in real-world locations, which other Vita users can view through the app. Doing so earns you -- we can't believe we're about to type this -- currency called "t@ggits."

Frobisher will be a free download for European pre-orderers this month, and be available for everyone else (in Europe) in May. T@g will be on PSN in Europe in May and can only be used with the 3G Vita (because of its GPS use).

Which giant company has the rights to the fan-created, community-promoted word "Dota?" That's up to the courts now. Blizzard has filed a Notice of Opposition with the US Patent and Trademark Office, seeking to block Valve's registration of the word. The word has been used exclusively in reference to a (mod of a) Blizzard game, the document explains. "By virtue of that use, the DOTA mark has become firmly associated in the mind of consumers with Blizzard, including to signify a highly popular scenario or variant of one of Blizzard's best-selling computer games, Warcraft III."

Valve, the document goes on to claim, hasn't used the word for anything yet. There's also a lot of history of Warcraft III, which is a really strange thing to read in a legal document. The case is in discovery now, with pretrial procedures taking place throughout this year and into next. We hope this court proceeding doesn't delay either of the games, as those companies are quite capable of delaying their games on their own.

You might think that Ghost Recon Online's three classes are Ghost, Recon, and Online, but you'd be wrong! They're actually the more commonly named Assault, Specialist, and Recon, and the video above will walk you through the different weapons, abilities, and upgrades that each class has available. You actually earn experience for each class as you play, so if you really want to master the game, you'll need to choose and play all three.

Ubisoft has also shared that the free-to-play game is getting a closed beta, starting on March 5, which you can sign up for by applying over on the official website.

Rocksteady Studios co-founder and game director Sefton Hill shared his recipe for making Arkham games at DICE 2012. Beyond the basic ingredients listed, all you'll need is a major license, a supportive publisher and millions to fund the project.

Sefton's Arkham recipe:

• Make the game instantly fun and accessible. "We believe it's our job to entertain," Hill said, adding that the free-flow combat of Arkham was meant to instantly convey the feeling of being Batman.
• Deep core mechanics, with a contant, incremental challenge to maintain engagement. "We developed combat by introducing new enemy types ... it keeps giving you more, it keeps challenging you."
• Complementary Orthogonal Design. Boiled down, it's that systems like navigation, combat and story "all have their own distinct and strong uses." Essentially, he encouraged designing complementary design elements that don't step on each other.
• Authenticity. "The restraints of the character define the character." Hill said certain elements may seem like a pain the ass, but that one must embrace those constraints. The fact that Batman can't kill anyone was something the team had to maintain at all times. "It stops us from falling back on a lot of game cliches." Takeway: Celebrate and explore the limitations of characters and what makes them unique.

So, there you go. Oh, you'll also need an engine. We're sure if you write a really nice letter to the guys at Epic, they'll let you license the Unreal Engine at a good price.

You could spend the rest of the day accompanied by the sounds of indie games, for a relative pittance. The second iteration of the Indie Game Music Bundle is available for the next week, offering a Humble-style collection of game soundtrack downloads.

For your [any amount of money] you get the soundtracks to Aquaria, Superbrothers Sword & Sworcery EP, To the Moon, Jamestown, and Machinarium. Hold on -- before you start throwing money at this, there's more you need to know. Pay over $10, and you'll get a pile of additional soundtracks, including Mighty Switch Force and Cat Astro Phi. Physical bonuses will be conferred upon especially high rollers.

OK, now you can get your money out.

We expect Mass Effect 3 to have action, a rich story, customizable weapons, co-op mode and intelligent enemies -- but that doesn't mean we don't want to see these things in action, right now. With the launch of a new website, Mass Effect 3 is showing off some of its core features in five new videos, with "Adrenaline Pumping Gameplay" shown above, and the other four below.

If you weren't expecting Mass Effect 3 to have things like "a story" or "enemies," maybe don't watch the videos and save the surprise for the game's release. Also, retroactive spoiler alert.

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Did you think it was weird that Dead or Alive games often featured totally out-of-place Aerosmith songs? We always did, but that music choice was fully, definitively justified by Tomonobu Itagaki in a speech at DICE 2012.

Itagaki explained that the first PS2 release of Dead or Alive 2 (which only came out in Japan; the one at the US PS2 launch, DOA2 Hardcore, was a remake) was unfinished, and sent to manufacturing under false pretenses. A manager approached him and asked to borrow a copy of the in-progress game to play it. "Instead," he said, "it was taken into a factory for production on that day without me knowing it." The team only had two and a half months to work on it. "To be sure, the company made a huge profit."

The game had relatively low-quality, jagged graphics and a lack of extra content. Itagaki became depressed about the unfinished game. "I thought I would quit making games," he said. "Some of the staff, including me, were so depressed by this fact." In this state, he stayed home for "three or four months," drinking and repeatedly watching ... Armageddon, singing along to the sappy "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" with his daughter, which he admitted was a "stupid life." "If I close my eyes now and recall Armageddon, tears still come out," he said.

So the secret to the Aerosmith songs in those DOA games is that Itagaki seriously, unironically loves Aerosmith. The real surprise is that Bruce Willis never made it into any of the games.

It's the end of the day, you've set aside work for the night and just enjoyed a delicious dinner of something breaded, fried and dipped in a seasoned dairy product, and now you need something to do -- something that doesn't require too much movement. Steam has predicted your desires with today's Daily Deal, Rage at 50 percent off, for $15.

If you don't already own it and want to give id Software's shooter a try, now might be a good time to pick up Rage. It's not called the Daily Deal for nothing.