The Steam edition of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 will ditch SecuROM in an upcoming game patch. Valve’s own authentication service will be used instead.

The update, version 522175, is imminent. Apparently there’s a bit of extra QA on Steam to bypass.

All non-Steam users can download the patch now. Unfortunately, a few problems appear to have cropped up; members of the BFBC2 forum report crashes to desktop after installing the update, and some are having account login issues.

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Blizzard, not short of things to do, has burped out a patch for Warcraft III – a game eight years old.

The update fixes “tower hack”, “summon/cooldown hack”, “new crash hack”, “phoenix hack” and ” sheep hack” exploits.

Full patch notes are on the Blizzard support site, as are sign-posts to download locations.

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Blizzard hopes to have a Mac version of the StarCraft II beta up and running in April.

The developer said on the Battle.net forum this was being worked on “currently” and for us to “hang in there”.

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty – the first of three StarCraft II games – will be be released in the first half of 2010.

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S bušilicom do pobede! Povratak u Rapture, ovaj put u čizmama Bid Daddyja, predstavlja praznik za sve ljubitelje Bioshock igara. Citajte dalje

Speaking at the Game Developers Conference, Sid Meier has declared that 2011 is “the year of Civilization”.

He made the statement during the Q&A session which followed his keynote speech. When asked what he’s looking forward to playing this year Meier said, “In the immediate future I think this is the year of Civlization.

“But looking further out, there’s so much energy and dynamism in this industry… Every day there’s something new, and that’s a big part of being excited about being in games,” he added.

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BioWare has singled out 2nd February 2011 as a significant date for the Dragon Age series.

The numbers “02.01.2011″ were printed on a leaflet inside the US Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening retail box, above a familiar blood-red dragon. 1UP took a picture.

There was no accompanying explanation, but this appears to be the “Dragon Age Title TBA” mentioned in EA’s Q3 financials in February.

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Various hints dropped by Peter Molyneux and Lionhead point to a PC version of Fable III.

“There are some things we haven’t seen,” Molyneux told GameSpot. “We still haven’t talked to the world about Natal. We still haven’t talked to the world about co-op and what we’re doing with co-op.

“We still haven’t really talked about, ‘Are there any other platforms for Fable that we should be talking about now?’”

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Realtime Worlds has told Eurogamer that its long-term roadmap for APB will see the game change considerably over its lifespan.

“We have a three-year plan for it,” David Jones said in an interview published today. “For me it’s like GTA to GTA III. It takes time, you can’t do it all on day one.

“We have a plan, we’ll actually build that into the storyline as well. There are some very unique long-term metagames coming that are much more in line with the style of game we are.”

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Stylish co-op crime caper Monaco has won top honours at the Independent Games Festival 2010.

Pocketwatch’s creation was hailed as Best Independent Game and took home the $20,000 Seamus McNally Grand Prize. Monaco also scooped Excellence in Design.

The other games nominated for the Seamus McNally Grand Prize were Joe Danger, Trauma, Rocketbirds: Revolution! and Super Meat Boy!.

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Blizzard senior engineer Dominic Fillion revealed the extent of the developer’s perfectionism at GDC today. During a presentation on programming StarCraft II, he quipped that the vast majority of the developer’s effort goes into the final polishing stages of the game.

“They say that the last 20 per cent of your effort gets you 80 per cent of your game,” Fillion said, quoting the the common game development maxim.

“With us it seems to be the other way around. 80 per cent of our effort goes into the final 20 per cent of polish.”

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