Sorry it’s a day late. Holidays created the delay.

Quick cap news

* South Korea has enacted a gaming curfew preventing gamers aged 15 or under from playing online games from midnight to 6AM. The curfew was passed unanimously.

* Gearbox has announced that any talk about Borderlands 2 not from them should be dismissed. It has stopped it popping up.

* Telltale has announced a release date for the remake of Hector: Badge of Carnage.

* An “ultra edition” of Super Meat Boy for the PC has been announced for release in the UK between and September.

* With its UK release, Mortal Kombat creator Ed Boon recalls the original game’s controversy nearly 20 years ago.

* THQ reports boosted sales for Dawn of War II Retribution after switching the platform from Games for Window Live to Steam.

* Ubisoft are offering free games with every purchase this weekend. It wouldn’t be too hard to purchase all the Ubisoft games worth having with such an offer.

* Fallout: New Vegas has little in the way of extra DLC so far, but that has not stopped a GOTY edition being prepared, it seems.

* An internal memo from Activision revealed a very strong optimism on the future strength of the Call of Duty series, good news for Call of Duty fans.

* Fans protested against certain aspects of Portal 2 on Metacritic. Personally, I agree that the in-game store is a bit of a low blow from Valve, but finds the criticism beside quite off the mark.

Main news

Lack of time means there’s no main news this week, but the upcoming week promises a full return to schedule and a review of Portal 2.

The quick cap news

* Peter Molyneux is to receive a BAFTA fellowship, the highest honour bestowed by the British arts award body.

* Tax breaks in the next budget might be in the works for UK games developers, as a measure to bolster the growing industry.

* Bioshock 2 DLC goes up and then down on GfWL. Despite the problems, 2K gave assurances that refunds would be given to those who purchased the originally free DLC.

* A new pro-gaming show, covering Intel-sponsored games, draws in 2.26 million viewers on Eurosport.

* Former RedOctane CEO attributes the death of the Guitar Hero franchise to abuse from Activision.

* Gabe Newell, managing director of digital distribution front-runners Valve, proposes a merit-based system for the purchasing of future DLC and, possibly, games.

* The US Federal Trade Commission are to investigate free-to-play games due to consumer fears that children did not understand the ramifications of in-game purchases.

* Yet another study concludes that there is no desensitising effect to video games. Thank you for saying, yet again, what gamers already know, and conservatives and identity politics groups will ultimately ignore.

* Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood will feature DRM that is much more tolerable than its predecessor. No longer will gamers be required to remain connected to the internet constantly to show Ubisoft that they haven’t been playing a second-hand pirated game.

* Witcher II developer CD Projekt Red asserted its own opposition to DRM in its new game, preferring a focus on richer game content. It was conceded that DRM may feature in the game as a result of factors from other parts of the retail chain.

* Several former Bizarre Creations employees have started a new studio, Lucid Games. Backed by local concerns trying to keep talent within Liverpool, the studio may create up to 50 jobs.

Main news

Telltale Games have been in the news a fair bit recently. Besides the recent Back to the Future series of episodic games, the developer has announced games based on the Jurassic Park franchise to appear in April. Further, they are expanding their range with the acquisition of DC’s Fables and a revival of Sierra classic King’s Quest. Other things in the pipeline included a publishing deal for indie adventure Hector: Badge of Carnage and a sequel to the earlier hit Puzzle Agent. Also, they released a video chronicling the rise of digital distribution.

Also…

* You won’t find this side of gaming out from Fox… Chime brings in $96,000 for charity.

* If human rights abuses and lack of democracy weren’t enough, it’s a bad day to be a gamer in Vietnam.

* Wind Waker stained glass auctioned on eBay.

* Petroglyph announces closed beta for its new F2P DotA style game, Rise of the Immortals.

* Also, this is one cool dad.

Have a good weekend all.

The quick cap news

* Richard Garriott returns with his latest offering Portalarium and talks about the costs and distribution model of social games. On the other side, Braid designer, Jonathen Blow, criticised social games for the way they treat consumers.

* Civilization IV became the first game to win a Grammy award for the song Baba Yetu. It took the “Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist(s)” in the 53rd annual award (incidentally, both it and the sequel, Civilization V are in the Steam deals as of the time of writing).

* Dragon Age II has gone gold, with a demo coming out in the next few days (the 22nd, to be exact). The completion of this demo unlocks a special dwarven weapon for use in the full version of this game upon release.

* Microsoft have been teasing people about a potential new Halo game, in a demonstration of the Kinect, they briefly displayed an image showing “Halo 5″ for a second or so. What happened to Halo 4, anyway?

* Magicka, the new indie hit with its innovative magic system, has hit 200K in sales. Certainly, with a lot of the bugs patched, it is a much more solid, enjoyable game and with only a few more minor tweaks, proper online play is viable. DLC is forthcoming.

* Activision Blizzard has been in the news a lot recently, with Blizzard announcing that its upcoming Starcraft II expansion, Heart of the Swarm, will likely not see a 2011 release.

* On the same front and despite its recent redundancies and the closing of a studio, rumours abound that Activision are interested in acquiring Take-Two Interactive. The rumour comes from British gaming magazine MCV and, for those not in the know about European media, the tendency to be as vague as possible about your sources here leads me to take this rumour with a pinch of salt.

* The open beta of the F2P MMO APB: Reloaded has attracted over 100k sign-ups. With a beta program set to begin on the 28th of this month, there is hope to revive what was one of the biggest flops in video gaming history.

* In other F2P news, Champions Online’s switch to a F2P model seems to have propped up Atari’s failing boxed retail sales and there is more news on Paradox Interactive’s Salem popping up, confirming perma-death.

* Finally, it seems Bungie are working on a new MMO FPS, possibly titled Destiny. Rumours abound about this ambitious project, which will be Bungie’s first post-Halo offering.

Main news

The big story today is that Crysis 2 and Killzone 3 have both been leaked onto the internet by pirates. The PS3 Killzone 3 leak comes after the Sony’s failed attempts to subpoena Google and Twitter in relation to PS3 hacks. In a joint statement, EA and Crytek lamented the leak of Crysis 2 and encouraged players to buy the game.

What this has lead to is two rather undesirable groups emerging: on the one hand we have the pirates themselves who use all sorts of justifications for their illegal activity and on the other PC gamers who run to levels of self-depreciation that would make Opus Dei members pause. What is needed, in my opinion, is a middle ground between these ultimately unhelpful extremes.

As an example of a better middle ground, l would present the reactions of people like Ice-Pick Lodge in response to the piracy of The Void and that of Gratuitous Space Battles creator Cliff Harris. They spoke with and tried to understand why pirates pirated games, Ice Pick even made a torrent of bonus content available. They were not sympathetic to pirates, as Cliff Harris wrote in his summary of events, but they tried to tackle the problem without useless recourse to DRM or talking about pirates while using the noun “fuck” or the adjective “fucking” every five seconds. As to The Void and GSB, I encourage everyone to look at and buy those excellent games.

Our second story is about the fate of Mirror’s Edge 2. EA rejected the pitch given by Swedish developer DICE after what was acknowledged to be less than expected sales of the first game. Despite excellent reviews, the game only entered UK charts at 20. While people at DICE have moved on to Battlefield 3, EA commented to 1UP claiming that the game was still in the background, refusing to confirm the game’s cancellation, and that it was “an important franchise” to EA. Further news on the future of the game as it comes. I personally find it telling that EA thinks of it as “IP” and a franchise rather than as a game, but that is inevitable given they are a large publisher who think in terms of what sells or does not rather than the innovation, beauty and grace of a game.

That’s all for the second week in gaming. Have a good weekend.