I first heard about the push to give customers back their unused $5 deposits a few weeks back, when a GameStop manager mentioned that calls would be going out urging customers to head into their local store and get back their money. The manager in question was none too happy, as a reserve cancelled is one less reserve registered for the day, and reserves are a key statistic used to track a GameStop store's success.

Now Kotakuite and former GameStop employee (aren't we all?) TheMadjai drops us a line to inform us that GameStop's automated service is calling customers, urging them to visit a website where they can enter in their phone number and last name in order to receive their money back in printable gift certificate form. You'll have to wait for the call, however, or else your unused reserves won't be on file.

I spoke to a GameStop manager about the phone calls, who verified that they are indeed going out. As for the day customers were called en masse to come cancel their unused reserves, the manager confirmed that quite a few people showed up, though a request for specifics was greeted with a heavy sigh and a "no comment."

Global Agenda is a combination of free and subscription-based team-based online shooter, but either way you've got to buy the game to play. Hi-Rez has nailed down February 1st, 2010 as the launch date for their first big title, with preorder bonuses in store for those who reserve a copy via Steam, Amazon.com, or directly from Hi-Rez. Fans putting their money down early get access to the game's closed beta events, a special in-game helmet, and a chance to reserve character and agency names before the masses arrive.

Amazon and Hi-Rez will also be selling a limited edition boxed version of the game, which comes with a poster and a Commonwealth art book, which details the rise of the game's totalitarian government.

Remember, each copy also comes with one month free subscription to the subscription-only Global Agenda: Conquest mode. Check out the difference between free and subscription pay and get more preorder details at the Global Agenda website.

See, this is what everyone said those folks in Switzerland were gonna do, create a bunch of Junior Mint black holes that will tear up this dimension. Apparently, in the year 2185, they have figured out how to safely create beachball-sized singularities. Well, they're not safe for the bad guys who get caught up in it, but that's their problem.

Mass Effect 2 Gamestop PreOrder Trailer [Gaming Today]

Chief among the changes, according to Jeremy Dunham, Zipper's senior community manager is an increase in the level cap to 60 from 40, a "retooled skill tree and experience curve," and "an improved ranking system." Most interestingly is a "proximity chat" feature that allows you to hear the enemy as you get closer, "or trash talk them yourself as you punch 'em full of lead."

Plenty of other details at Dunham's post on PlayStation.Blog, which concludes with a thank you to all of the other beta players preceding the GameStop pre-order beta.

MAG Beta 4 Starts…Now! [PlayStation.blog via VG247]

The deal's of course restricted to pre-orders of the PC L4D2, Steam or retail. However, if you've already preordered the game, never fear. "Just fire up TF2 and you'll find the hat in your next game," the ad states.

For the record, Valve offers this defense of shamelessly rending two continuities asunder just to make a fast buck:

Lest you think this is just some marketing gimmick, here's the intricate back-story justifying it: while conducting a science experiment on parallel dimensions, Bill's hat fell off a table into the Team Fortress universe.

Plausible. The hat preorder bonus accompanies a 10 percent discount, too.

Pre-Order Giveaway Madness! [TF2 Official Blog]

The epic space RPG continues on January 26th in North America, with Europe joining the fray three days later on the 29th. Along with the release date announcement, EA has revealed preorder bonus equipment available via download code once the game hits store shelves.

Most retail outlets will receive codes for Inferno Armor (seen above), which increases your Commander Shepard's negotiation skills, run speed, and combat damage. Those opting to preorder from GameStop will receive the Terminus Assault Armor (seen below), which includes an armor suit that augments run speed, damage, shields, and adds an additional magazine of reserve ammo, and the M-490 Blackstorm Heavy Weapon, which generates a localized gravity well, which sounds painful.

"Our fans are in for a genuine thrill in the New Year with Mass Effect 2 - the second installment in the trilogy will be of amazingly high quality," said Dr. Ray Muzyka, co-founder, BioWare and Group General Manager of the RPG/MMO Group of EA. "BioWare's fans worldwide have been eagerly awaiting this epic sequel, and we couldn't be more excited to reward them for pre-ordering by delivering some awesome bonus content!"

I for one am relieved that a release date has finally been nailed down. Now I know which week to request off. Don't tell Crecente.

Steam is unlocking Dragon Age: Origins on November 3rd, and it's got two different flavors of the game to choose form. Both versions come with the preorder exclusive Memory Band experience ring, The Stone Prisoner DLC, and the Mass Effect 2 crossover Blood Dragon Armor, as well as a Steam exclusive ring called The Wicked Oath, which adds 10% to critical strike damage, improves your armor penetration, and helps you regenerate stamina faster in combat.

So what do you get for an extra $15 in the Digital Deluxe Edition?

First off, there's even more new content in the form of Warden's Keep, featuring quests that explore the Grey Wardens' original expulsion from Ferelden, new items and spells, and a base of operations where your character can store his or her stuff. The deluxe edition also comes with a special helmet, a magic staff, and a grimoire that increases your attributes. All that, plus a selection of desktop wallpapers and a collection of music from the soundtrack for only $15 above the normal price. <s?Sounds like a pretty good deal to me.<.s>

Both editions are now available for pre-purchase via Steam.

UPDATE: Steam has corrected the price for the Digital Deluxe version to $64.99, $10 more than it was originally listed for. I have modified the post accordingly.

And he does. But it'll be a haul getting there. This past Sunday, Neumann promised to play Borderlands, Gearbox's upcoming "role-playing shooter" on day one and hand out in-game moolah to anyone who sent him a picture of their preorder receipt. We saw Neumann's tweet touting the deal and sent out word, turning a barely noticed Twitter message into a full-on bumrush.

"OMFG KOTAKU DID NOT JUST DO THAT TO ME," Neumann tweeted after getting flooded with preorder claims. Then instead of learning his lesson and cutting off the deal at midnight, Neumann extended the offer a second and even a third day.

We talked with Mike after he finished tallying up and handwriting scores of PSN IDs and Xbox Live Gamertags (above).

"It's north of 200 names, for sure," Neumann said on Wednesday, with "about half of it," coming after we sent up a flare. (Celebrity entrants even included Infinity Ward's Robert Bowling)

"People are still sending me receipts and Gamertags. I wrote a few of the late people down just for fun, but I've had to turn a lot of people down or I'll never get work done again," he said. "And there's swearing robots to make!"

Neumann made his offer available to anyone who sent in visual proof that they preordered the game. His Twitter followership surged from 600 to more than 1,000 as gamers flooded his feed with screengrabs of Amazon preorders, pictures of GameStop receipts, and in-store snapshots. Four people, definitely gunning for extra credit, did a full three-platform preorder - PS3, PC and Xbox 360.

"That's dedication," Neumann said. "I also had a few people buy multiple copies on the same platform for friends. I might give those guys a few extra pieces of loot, but I like to think they're all getting special treatment in a way."

Redeeming his end of the unofficial preorder bargain is not some casual affair, like plugging in some cheat code or loading up a post-apocalyptic Santa Claus swag sack with goodies in a developer build of the game. Neumann's straight up gotta farm all this stuff himself. This will be time consuming, but not necessarily difficult, as Neumann said Borderlands "is a game where you can punch a midget's leg off and, with the right skills equipped, money might come out.

But again, "That's sort of the whole bitch of this thing, we'll actually have to collect the loot," he said. "All game rules are final, so to speak. I've already asked off of work and I still plan to play with these people. Maybe I'll just get really drunk every night so I'll be extra fun to play with. I'll probably be trying to hand out loot in ODST or something and not realize what's wrong."

Yes? Go on.

"No, for real, we got a solid plan and I'll be collecting like crazy with the days up to launch," Neumann said, quite soberly.

With more than 200 people owed playtime and loot, Neumann has enlisted some of his Gearbox colleagues to help bear the load. And though on Monday in the office "a couple people gave me shit," in a good-natured way, Neumann's happy to spend a few extra days playing Borderlands if it means spreading word about his game, a new IP fighting for airtime among sequels in a blockbuster-release season.

"I expected to see around 40 or 50 [preorders]," Neumann said. "I was looking for the super hardcore fans; I wanted to play with them. I'm glad it went down like it did. When you anticipate a result, and what happens is bigger than you expected, it puts a smile on your face."

Answering one of the questions Luke raised when the Left 4 Dead 2 demo was first announced, customers who preorder the game from either Steam or participating retailers will receive early access to the demo, currently targeted for an October 27th release. Preorder customers will also enjoy 10% off the full purchase price, and an exclusive in-game American baseball bat, one of the new melee weapons that constitutes one of the core differences between this game and last year's original.

You can head over to Steam and preorder your copy right now, or you can be really nice and preorder a 4-pack to make sure you have friends when you take on the freshly-awakened zombie hordes.

Turbine takes players from the Mines of Moria to the Siege of Mirkwood on December 1st, when the digital expansion pack goes on sale for $19.99. As a special incentive to return to the game, lapsed players who reactivate their accounts using a multi-month plan between now and October 31st will get the expansion free of charge, which is perhaps Turbine's way of making loyal customers extremely angry.

Today Turbine also announces the LOTRO Adventurer's Pack, which adds two character slots to players' accounts, as well as two shared bank slots to facilitate item transfer between characters. The pack is now available for preorder, with those who do receiving an 8% increase to their run speed thanks to the Harbinger's Cloak and the Dusky Nimblefoot Goat mount to boot.

For more information, head over to the expansion website. Note that the special offers are only available for a limited time, after which you'll just have to suffer, and no one enjoys suffering.

Neumann declared today "OFFICIAL BORDERLANDS PREORDER DAY," in this Tweet.

"Today is OFFICIAL BORDERLANDS PRE ORDER DAY. Twitter me a screen of you buying the game and I'll play BLs with you and give you loot."

No idea on how this is redeemed, exactly, or what loot you get - whether that's in-game items or IRL swag.

Big thanks to reader Fenring for spotting this.

Update: As reader akusatou pointed out, I think we just called a bluff with no idea it was a bluff. A panicked Mike Neumann tweeted a couple hours ago: "OMFG KOTAKU DID NOT JUST DO THAT TO ME," followed by "That is hilarious." He seems to be serious about following through on this, however. I'm not sure how many people swamped him, but folks, he's only one guy, if he can't follow through on this with everyone, please cut him some slack. Borderlands looks like an awesome game anyway.

And to those who think this was some deliberate dick move on my part, how the hell was I to know? Maybe the guy had some sort of loot code to hand out. I swear I thought Mike was being straight-up serious.

Second Update: Neumann earlier joked that Infinity Ward's Robert Bowling "should make the same mistake I did today." Bowling's reply? A pre-order of Borderlands on Amazon.com. "I admire your bravery, sir, now loot me!" said FourZeroTwo. Neumann said his list of PSN and XBL tags had gone over 100 as of Sunday evening.

"There are more people waiting in cues to start the game than there are in the game itself," writes one tipster. "and this is just the people with pre-orders. This will be a nightmare when the game actually launches."

In that screen above, you see one poor guy is facing down a 7 hour, 30 minute wait at position 2994 out of 3188 in the queue. Others have sent in screenshots showing much shorter wait times. But wait times nonetheless. It seems fair to say NCsoft wasn't prepared for its Head Start campaign to get this much buy-in. I'm sure many are hoping that day one of the full release will open up some sort of extra server capacity, but unfortunately, I have no information. I'll update if I hear anything. Aion players, please do share your experiences in the comments.

Update: This is from Fahey, I'll quote him directly: "Might be worth noting that even with 10 instances of each starting area mobs are camped all over the place, and there's some horrible quest bottlenecking as dozens of players wait for quest objects to spawn."

For an Eastern import, Aion has been making quite a lot of noise among MMO circles, taking the beauty of a Korean game and marrying it with a design meant to appeal to Western gamers. Judging from the preorder numbers NCsoft is definitely doing something right, though calling it the "biggest MMO launch of the year" isn't really saying much, considering the only real competition it has had is Champions Online, a superhero MMO from the same company that created the other superhero MMO currently on the market for NCsoft.

Each of the nearly 400,000 preorder customers gain access to server pre-selection tomorrow, as well as an early jump start that kicks off on Sunday, two days in advance of the official release. I have several different groups of friends who plan on playing, so I currently have no earthly clue which server or side I'll wind up on.

Fireteam Bravo 3 is being deployed to the PSP on November 24th, making it the perfect stocking stuffer for the new PSP or PSPgo owner in your life, but you might want to put a few dollars down early. Those that do will gain access to two special units with two special weapons, giving them a bit of an advantage over the rest of the multiplayer crowd. The Kommando Speizialkrafte (below, left) is a Special Operations Division trooper who comes packing the F2000 assault rifle, while the elite British Special Air Service unit prefers the range and power of the AS-50 BMG sniper/anti-material rifle.

Note that folks who buy the game online via the PlayStation Store will still receive the preorder extras as long as they order within 30 days of release. You can check out the two new units and their weapons below, and if you scroll down further you just might catch a glimpse of the official pack art.

SOCOM: Fireteam Bravo 3 Deploys November 24 [PlayStation Blog]

It's 09/09/09, and EA and GameStop are being rather clever, turning the date upside-down, removing the zeroes, and offering $6.66 off Dante's Inferno, the video game adaptation of a portion of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. Orders must be placed via the GameStop website between now and tomorrow morning at 11am Pacific in order to score the discount, along with free 2-day shipping for those of you who don't mind waiting a little bit to explore the scenic circles of hell.

Save $6.66 and receive free 2-Day Shipping on Dante's Inferno! [GameStop.com]

The exclusive S.V.E.R. character is yours if you lay your $5 down at GameStop. If your allegiance is to Game Crazy, you'll get the tuned-up RAVEN fighter. The VALOR character (pictured) is still TBD. For those not initiated, these are the three mercenary factions with which you may align in this 256-combatant shooter/MMO, once it releases Jan. 26.

The descriptions of all three are at the link below.

Anyway, if all Amazon gets is a PlayStation Home space for its preorder trouble, then wow. Someone cut a bad deal there.

MAG Pre-Order Bonuses: Choose Your PMC [PlayStation.blog via EvilAvatar]

And just like Cash4Gold, you get nothing for something with this offer, too! Well, not really. Something about unlimited boosts. And you can ... wait for it ... do a barrel roll! and other moves with impunity. Plus, you won't cry yourself to sleep anymore!

You know what would be great? If used game sales worked like this. Just put Bionic Commando in this insured (why?) pouch and - get even less on your trade-in!

Are ya wondering if Gold4Jetpack.com exists? Yeppers. Not much, but there's a page.

GOLD4JETPACK [site, thanks Alberto]

Reader Crashbanito, and others signed up on the Brütal Legend email, got word this morning that pre-ordering the game through GameStop gets you early access to the demo. You also get a special in-game guitar which probably does nothing but looks cool.

Sigh. Well, OK, I'm probably still gonna hook myself up with this, but early demo access is now getting kind of abusive. I know it's only $5, and it's technically part of the cost I'm paying for the game. But I'm gonna wait on it out of principle.

The offer's on the front of the Brütal Legend site if you're interested.

For the record, these are the first two multiplayer classes announced for the game. The best we can get for pictures are these small ones, unfortunately. But it looks reasonably legit, even if the gal looks like the Columbia Pictures logo and I expect the dude to serve me fish sticks.

No word if these will be available for purchase to the public at large after BioShock's release, or if they'll remain exclusive to those who put down a deposit with GameStop.

BioShock 2 MP Characters Promotion Revealed [Koku Gamers via Joystiq. Images from BioShock 2 forum member Rocco.]

People who pre-order the 5th Cell-developed game at GameStop in the U.S. or EB Games in Canada will receive this spiffy Maxwell rooster hat when they pick up their copy on Sept. 15. Quantities are limited.