2K's futuristic alien shooter Prey was part of the ongoing Steam end-of-the-year sale, until they ran out. That's right, Steam is completely sold out of a downloadable title, running out of keys for the game before the sale could run its course. How does this happen? Well this is speculation, but I would assume a game like Prey requires some sort of CD key, which are generated by the company selling it on Steam, and there is a finite number of them available.

That, or they were stolen by key gnomes. Goddamned key gnomes.

It isn't a total loss, however. 2K has replaced Prey in the sale with 75% off of BioShock. $4.99 BioShock trumps Prey at any price.

Thanks to everyone who sent in this tip, especially Klaus, who saved me the trouble of pressing the print screen button.

Steam's holiday sale has kicked off a little early this year, with all kinds of tempting deals. Like Mirror's Edge for $5, GTAIV for $7.50 and Defense Grid for $2.50.

That's Mirror's Edge, GTAIV and Defense Grid - three of the finest games of the past two years- all for $15. Crazy.

There are plenty more great deals listed (50% off all Ubisoft games, an Eidos pack with Batman, Mini Ninjas, Deus Ex and Hitman), and plenty more to come until the sale ends on Sunday, January 3.

[Steam Holiday Sale]

First up, "over 60" Steam achievements are being retro-fitted to the title. Next up, it's being made compatible with Steam Cloud, meaning you can move your settings and save games between computers (handy, since Torchlight runs so well on laptops).

And finally, the game's going on sale this weekend. It'll cost you $10. That, kids, is a steal.

According to a new report from Gamasutra on last month's NPD figures, the PC version of Modern Warfare 2 moved "nearly 170,000" copies at retail. That doesn't include figures for Steam, Valve's digital distribution system, which are likely to have been significant—today, over 100,000 Steam users were playing the game online at the same time, but we're not sure how that breaks down to retail and online sales.

Still, at least 170,000 copies to a group of gamers that balked at the lack of dedicated servers and a higher-than normal price tag is.... pretty good?

Regardless of Modern Warfare 2's success or failures on the PC side of things, Gamasutra's in-depth look at November's NPD estimates are good reading for the sales obsessed gamer.

NPD: Behind the Numbers, November 2009 [Gamasutra]

"The Passing" offers more than just a friendly Survivor get-together, adding one new "uncommon common" infected type, new weapons—one melee, one firearm—and "a new co-operative challenge mode of play." The new campaign will naturally be playable in Survival, Versus and Scavenge modes in addition to that still unannounced newer mode.

The new episode is "set in a small town in rural Georgia," according to Valve's release, keeping players in the role of Left 4 Dead 2's cast "as they meet with the L4D1 characters." Could "The Passing" offer 4-plus-4 cooperative multiplayer action, or are we just aiming too high?

Left 4 Dead 2's "The Passing" is scheduled for release in "early spring" for the PC and Xbox 360. Pricing has not yet been announced.

Most of the changes appear to be relatively small, somewhat reducing the effectiveness of the Spitter in some circumstances, but not by much. A less specific updating of Special Infected hit boxes is also included, but how they were updated, we're not yet sure.

Update: Yes, we are sure. This Steam forum thread illustrates the differences between the old and new hit boxes for the Charger, Jockey and Spitter.

Here's the full list of changes.

• Changed rules for ghost placement in Scavenge Mode
• Player controlled Special Infected are no longer forced to un-crouch and lock strafe when they crouch attack
• Spitter spit that damages players on a moving elevator will now fizzle quickly
• Allow the survivor and infected to rotate the camera yaw while being attacked by a Charger or Smoker
• Smoker that has dragged a survivor to the end now gets the same cinematic flashlight as the Hunter and Charger
• Fixed a crash in physics
• Updated the Charger's hit boxes
• Updated the Jockey's hit boxes
• Updated the Spitter's hit boxes
• Fixed player health on being revived after a Charger slam over a high ledge
• Fixed versus scores not resetting after a vote to change campaigns
• Fixed being able to use defibrillator on dead players who were far above or below you
• Fixed pink glow on dead survivors
• Fixed being able to hold crouch while incapped to get better weapon accuracy
• Fixed players pushing against some props causing them to accumulate downward velocity and then take falling damage when they let go of the forward key
• Fixed a case where an incapped survivor inside a rescue vehicle would trigger both the escape sequence and a round restart
• Fixed the helping hand from getting stuck when extended

What do you get for your hard-won dough? Well, about eight hours of gameplay and new missions! Easy-to-critical shambling zombies! (And crawling torsos). New annoying Claptrap dialogue! And squishy, squishy brains.

Ten bucks too much? Come on. Just sell a ZR-15/2 Deathly Stomping Revolver or something. Skags barf those things up more than Mighty Skag, uh, skag food. So do the flaming psychos. The skag food I mean, not the weapons.

The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned [Gearbox Store]
The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned [Steam]

Zombie Driver's name caught my eye, and then the gameplay trailer we posted in October took said eye out and played with it for awhile. Looking very much like an old-school Grand Theft Auto title, Zombie Driver sees players driving through an undead-infected city, plowing through hordes of zombies as they race to rescue survivors of the apocalypse. As you play you buy and unlock new cars, upgrading them with various implements of destruction, such as flamethrowers, rocket launchers, or dual railguns.

EXOR could have very well just released a free-roaming zombie killing widget and I would have been completely satisfied, yet they've gone above and beyond, with 17 story missions with sub quests and bonus missions, just in case you get tired of mindlessly slaughtering the undead and wish to mindfully slaughter them. There's even a combo system to make the slaughter even more rewarding.

GamersGate currently has the game available for $9.95, while steam is selling it for $8.99 for a limited time. That seems like a ridiculously low price. The game unlocks on Steam in a couple of hours, so check out the screens and trailer to see if they make your heart sing as much as they did mine.

While The Scourge Project will have its fair share of online multiplayer options, including capture the flag, deathmatch, team deathmatch, and frontiers, Tragnarion's focus for the game is story-drive co-op. The Scourge Project's co-op allows up to four players to step into the role of a key player in the story, with each experiencing the unfolding events from a unique point-of-view.

Set in the near future, the players are members of the elite mercenary group Echo Squad, hired by one corporation to steal technology from the evil Nogari Corporation. Stranded on Nogari Island soon after their insertion and surrounded on all sides, the players must accomplish their goals and work together to survive the experience.

Game director Omar Salleh voices Tragnarion's excitement over the upcoming release.

"We're really excited about the upcoming release of The Scourge Project. The whole team has put a huge amount of love and effort into creating something special and we're all eager to see action gamers the world over having a blast with the gameplay and soaking up the breathtaking visuals and soundscapes. Our unique blend of co-op action plus co-op storytelling, in which each playable character has a distinct perspective on the central plot, brings something new to the table and we're definitely looking forward to expanding on this and much more in the rest of the Scourge Saga."

And yes, it is a saga that Tragnarion is crafting. The first release will be composed of two episodes with four complete levels. Future releases more than likely rest on the success of the first.

The Scourge Project will be released on Steam later this month, with an Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network release slated for March of 2010. For more information, visit the official website.

Gamers made noise when the sequel to last year's cooperative survival horror title was announced earlier this year, but the quick follow-up doesn't seem to have hurt Left 4 Dead 2's sales figures. More than 2 million copies of the PC and Xbox 360 versions have sold at retail, a figure that doesn't even take Steam purchases into account. That's great news for Valve, who in turn have more great news on the way.

"Left 4 Dead 2 is off to a great start with strong support at retail and great reviews from the press," said Doug Lombardi, VP of marketing at Valve. "Meanwhile the title has already been played by over 1 million Xbox LIVE Gold account holders, and news regarding L4D2 DLC 1 is coming very soon."

I'd urge our readers to keep their eyes on Kotaku for said DLC news, but that's no way to survive the zombie apocalypse.

GamersGate CEO Theodore Bergquist tells Kotaku that "We have daily direct contact with all major publishers out there, we can benchmark most of our numbers with both Steam and Direct2Drive, and we know for sure that Impulse is never up for discussion as being one of the biggest".

"Unfortunately I can't give you any specific numbers on titles", he adds, "though in many, many cases we know that GamersGate sell as many units as Steam for the mid-size segment of titles. For AAA's we sell anything between half to a quarter. With a few exceptions they sell more than that. This is information we get from publishers direct from the source – their digital distribution teams."

Meanwhile, Direct2Drive's Sutton Trout told Gamasutra "Stardock's recent assessment of its service [that Impulse holds a clear number two position in the digital distribution space] is misinformation at best. An NPD report from earlier this year refutes Stardock's claim outright and clearly identifies Direct2Drive as a top-performer."

So, now that three of Steam's main competitors have sounded off, what do we now know about the PC download market that we didn't before?

Well, aside from the fact Impulse won't be getting many Christmas cards from Direct2Drive and GamersGate this year, we know that for at least one of these companies (GamersGate), the reason they don't release sales figures is down to NDAs signed with their publishers. So if you want hard numbers, you know who to blame.

Oh, and we also know that none of this bickering involves serious competing with Steam, leading us to believe that the PC scene's pecking order is Steam first, daylight second, and these guys jostling over the last spot on the podium.

He says around 2500 Steam accounts were targeted. That's a lot of cheaters for a game being played on controlled servers over Steam.

Then again, it's a proportionate number; 2500 may sound like a lot, but for a game as big as Modern Warfare 2, it's probably a small percentage of the overall market.

[fourzerotwo @ Twitter]

Amazon.com: The Black Friday video game deals are in full swing, with more game discounts being revealed all day long. Right now you can get bargain prices on Forza 3 and Halo 3: O.D.S.T.

On the console side of things, Amazon has a 120GB PlayStation 3 bundle that comes with inFamous and Killzone 2, with a $10 Amazon promotional credit included.

Best Buy: While most of Best Buy's Black Friday goodness is sold out online, there are several great deals in stores, including a $299 120GB PlayStation 3 bundle with LittleBigPlanet and Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time; an Xbox 360 Elite bundle for $399 that includes Pure, LEGO Batman, and a bundle of Wall-E, Spider-Man: Web of Shadows, Sonic the Hedgehog and Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2; and the two limited-edition Nintendo DSi systems, each with bundled software and a $20 gift card.

Brutal Legend: The Brutal Legend blog has posted a deal tracker so you can find the best possible price on Brutal Legend on Black Friday. Check it out here.

Capcom: The Capcom store is dicounting PC titles from 20-75% off for Black Friday, with free shipping on $25 worth of toys, books, and other fine Capcom-related products.

Dell Direct: Dell Direct is selling a Nintendo Wii bundled with New Super Mario Bros. Wii and an additional Wii remote for $249.99, which saves you the price of that additional remote.

EA: The EA Store has downloadable PC titles on sale for 30% off, including the latest releases like Dragon Age: Origins.

EA Mobile: More than 30 EA iPhone and iPod Touch titles have been discounted by up to 50% for the holiday weekend. From casual titles like Littlest Pet Shop and Sudoku to big-name games like Command & Conquer: Red Alert and Rock Band, now would be a great time to download some EA to your Apple device.

Futureshop: Canadians can have Black Friday deals too! Futureshop has popular EA console games on sale for $39.99 apiece, including Dragon Age: Origins, Brutal Legend, and Left 4 Dead 2.

Gameloft: Gameloft has reduced prices on a bunch of iPhone games to $.99 for the day. Terminator Salvation, Shrek Kart, Blades of Fury, Real Tennis 2009, Brothers in Arms: Hour of Heroes, Castle of Magic, and Hero of Sparta for less than a buck could certainly help you pass the time waiting in line today.

GameStop: For those of you living where it's not hit 11AM yet, you've still got time to partake of GameStop's doorbuster bundles, which include a $299 PlayStation 3 with LittleBigPlanet Game of the Year Edition and God of War I & II and an Xbox 360 Elite with Pure, LEGO Batman, and your choice of either Call of Duty: World at War or Bakugan.

Steam Sale: The Steam 5-Day 1-Day Sale continues today, with Left 4 Dead 2 at $37.49, Mini-Ninjas at $14.99, Dead Space for $14.99, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic for a measly $2.49. Plus, keep in mind that Steam also has LucasArts and THQ bundles on sale for $49.99, so if you've got a fan of either developer in your family, you've got them covered.

Be sure to check out our Black Friday tag page for all of the deals we've been posting over the past couple of months.

Remember, this is by no means a complete list. This is a starting point. A place for our friends in the comment section to share their own deals with each other, giving their fellow gamers a hand in finding the best deals going on during the busiest shopping day of the year. Sharing is caring!

Steam kicks off the sale with a slightly longer one-day event, running from now until Friday morning at 8AM Pacific. They've got Dragon Age: Origins for 25% off; Batman: Arkham Aslyum for 50% off; Grid for %75 off, and several other interesting deals. On Friday they shift to a 24-hour schedule, with a new one-day sale kicking off every day until Monday.

On top of the game deals, they'll be running bundle specials for the length of the event, with 15 THQ games or 16 LucasArts titles on sale for $49.99 per pack. The prices are insane!

Keep an eye on Steam all weekend long for more wondrous deals.

That's every single one of the gaming PC-makers laptops and desktops going forward. With a free copy of Portal thrown in for good measure. Sounds trivial, but this is exactly the kind of thing that gives Internet Explorer such a huge market share: it's not because it's any good, it's because you buy a PC, and it's normally already there, waiting for you.

Since Alienware aren't exactly the world's #1 supplier of gaming hardware, this move in of itself isn't that important, but if you think Dell (who own Alienware) are the only company Valve are going to sign a deal like this with, you're mad as a hatter.

Highlights of the fix include:

• Fixed performance problem when rendering lots of decals, notably when fighting tanks with shotguns
• Fixed rcon response not working on Linux dedicated servers
• Fixed matchmaking problem matching into Advanced and Expert games
• Fix bug that would cause other specials to try to pummel a player a Charger disconnects or reconnects
• Fixed versus mode results panel being cut off in transition stats screen in non-english
• Found games: fixed non-player entries drawing the wrong type of icon in the selected item name label
• Game mode selector on main menu now takes keyboard input

There's more via Steam.

Left 4 Dead 2 Patch Update [Steam via VG247]

Industrious Left 4 Dead modders have devised a not-exactly-simple workaround to bring the original game's four campaigns into the sequel. The very unofficial, multi-step hack requires ownership of Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2, ample patience and better than basic knowledge of editing PAK files. But, hey, it works.

Well, it mostly works. The list of issues includes numerous crashes, limitations and a dependency on console commands, but if you're desperate to play No Mercy with Spitters and baseball bats, you now have the option. Will Valve offer a sanctioned version of this? At the risk of pissing off the Left 4 Dead owner further, we sure hope it does.

How to Resurrect the Original Left 4 Dead [L4D Mods]

Stardock boss Brad Wardell says "Our estimation is that Steam - as the current market leader - enjoys approximately 70 percent of the overall digital distribution market with Impulse at 10 percent and all others combined at 20 percent in terms of actual dollars generated per month".

While we have our doubts that Stardock's Impulse service is at #2 (surely Direct2Drive is bigger?), Steam's 70% figure is - if it checks out - both interesting and frightening at the same time. That's about the same level of market domination Apple enjoys in the music player scene.

Quick: name another portable music device that's not an iPod. Off the top of your head. Now tell me how many people you know own an iPod compared to a portable music device that's not an iPod.

Exactly.

[via Gamasutra]

The single player experience in the PC and Xbox 360 versions of the game is largely the same, with a few obvious differences. There's the controller layout of course, and being a PC gamer long before I was a console gamer I will always be much more comfortable with a keyboard and trackball mouse than I ever will be with a standard Xbox 360 controller. I could argue that it allows for better accuracy, but it seems to me at least that the hit boxes are skewed more towards console gamers in the PC version, meaning that accuracy isn't as important as it is in more PC-centric titles.

The graphics seem a tad bit sharper on my PC, but that could just as well be a factor of the clarity of my monitors and the fact that my current gaming rig - an Intel Core i7 2.6GHz with 6GB of RAM and dual GeForce GTX 275's - is a bit beefier than what I'm used to playing on. It really isn't a huge difference, however, so I wouldn't call either side the winning one graphically.

Basically, as far as single player is concerned, the games are relatively similar. Which brings us to the multiplayer side of things.

The PC version of Modern Warfare 2 has of course gotten a great deal of flack from the PC community for imposing console player-limits and removing the ability to create dedicated servers for online multiplayer, a feature that's been standard in previous games in the series.

This having been said, the PC version loses a point to the Xbox 360 as far as local multiplayer options go, with the ability to network multiple 360 consoles together via System Link. There are no LAN options for Modern Warfare 2, and of course no split-screen multiplayer either, so the console is coming out on top so far.

Aside from the LAN options and a few smaller details, such as PC text chat, that's where the differences end, which I suppose is why many PC gamers are incensed. The PC version features the same, network-controlled matchmaking system as the Xbox 360 version, without any of the advanced controls that PC players are used to. You can still set up a private game and tweak options like number of lives and friendly-fire, but for the most part it's click, join, and go.

As for reports of the PC version being open to cheaters and hackers, I've yet to see an instance of obvious cheating in my brief time on Steam, though in all fairness I do spend an awful lot of time dying.

As a PC gamer myself, I find the lack of dedicated servers to be frustrating, but then I am also a console gamer, so this is the sort of thing I've gotten used to over the past few years. When all is said and done, it's a matter of personal perception whether the system is inferior or not. Should you feel slighted for getting what is essentially the same thing on both platforms? That's completely up to you.

Keep in mind that I'm not the most dedicated or skilled Modern Warfare 2 player by a long shot, and your personal experiences with the two different versions may vary. If they do, they by all means, tell us.

To be honest, Torchlight hadn't originally made it into our fall reviewing schedule, being a budget-priced game in a season filled with blockbuster PC and console titles. Our readers were adamant, however, and after an outpouring of support via our tips email, we decided to give this unapologetic Diablo clone a good hard look.

Set in the mining town of Torchlight, which serves as the player's base of operations, the game sends the player into a twisted underground dungeon network in order to root out a source of corruption that could endanger the entire world. With our trusty pet at our side, we delve into the dark depths of Torchlight.

Loved
Diabloriffic Gameplay: If you are looking for a quick and dirty Diablo alternative, this is it right here. Torchlight is your basic click-to-move isometric dungeon crawler, with fast action, randomly generated dungeons, experience points, red healing and blue mana potions, random named boss monsters, and enough equipment dropping to have you clicking on your Town Portal scroll every 10 minutes or so just to unload and restock on Identify Scrolls. It's so unabashedly a Diablo clone that I'd laugh - if the gameplay weren't so enjoyable.

Customization: Torchlight features a wealth of character customization options, from talent points granted when your character gains an experience or reputation level, to socketed gems that add stats and elements to weapons and armor, to the random enchanter, who can power up your equipment beyond belief or strip it of your favorite features. Each of the three classes has multiple talent skill trees to delve into, meaning going back through the game with the same class could yield you a relatively unique experience. If you're as big a fan of tweaking little details as I am, then there's plenty here to sidetrack you from the main event.

Man's Best Friend: Each character in Torchlight starts off with either a dog or a cat companion, a feature lifted directly from the Fate series of dungeon crawlers. Your pet follows you on your adventure, gaining power as you do, fighting by your side. By pausing in your adventure to do a little fishing, you can catch magical fish that transform your pet into another creature entirely, making an entirely new set of abilities available until the magic wears off. Torchlight may lack multiplayer options, but you're never quite alone with your trusty kitty by your side.

And a Side of Questing: Torchlight allows you to take a break from the main story line to do a little questing on the side. Certain NPCs grant you side quests, which either involve finding objects in the main story dungeons or journeying into levels created specifically for the quest. You can also purchase dungeon maps from certain vendors, which will give you even more new areas to explore.

The Look, The Sound, of DiabloCraft: The presentation of Torchlight is definitely Diablo meets Warcraft, resulting in a world that's definitely lighter than the dark realm of the former, with elements that seem lifted almost directly from the latter - the first time you run into a goblin riding a steampunk mech, you'll feel as if you just ported in from Warcraft's world of Azeroth. Aiding the similarities is a musical score by Diablo composer and sound designer Matt Uelmen, whose string arrangements bring you right back to the unfortunate town of Tristam.

The Random Item Vendor: I love the Random Item Vendor. He presents you with a list of statless weapons and armor, and only after you pay an exorbitant amount for them will you find out what you just bought. In one instance I walked away with an epic bow for my Vanquisher character (think rogue / ranger), which had me slaughtering smaller trash mobs with a single shot. It's a gamble, but when it pays off it is definitely worth it.

Hated
Something Vaguely Evil This Way Comes: An evil force is corrupting the magical ember beneath the mining town of Torchlight, and it's up to you to ignore any story points and go back to mindlessly slaughtering anything in your way. The story is simply a thin excuse to keep the player moving, and not much more than that.

The Random Item Vendor: I hate the Random Item Vendor. He presents you with a list of statless weapons and armor, and only after you pay an exorbitant amount for them will you find out what you just bought. In one instance I walked away with a set of armor that I could never hope to have my character wear without completely forgoing her main attribute to focus on one she had little need for. It's a gamble, and when it doesn't pay off it really bites.

To really enjoy Torchlight you have to accept it for what it is. It's a Diablo clone with bits of Warcraft and Fate thrown in, sure, but when the development team consists of people directly responsible for those titles you pretty much have to give them a pass. Once you overcome the initial shock of seeing just how much familiar material the team has pulled from previous projects, you can begin to appreciate the high level of polish they've given that material, and the proficiency that comes with their experience.

While it would have benefited greatly from a deeper story and a multiplayer component, Torchlight is one of the best Diablo-style games you're likely to find without the Blizzard logo displayed prominently on the front of it.

Torchlight was developed by Runic Games and published by Perfect World Entertainment, Inc. on October 27th for the PC. Retails for $19.99 USD on Steam, with a retail version coming early next year. A copy of the game was acquired via Steam press pass for reviewing purposes. Played through the entire story as a Vanquisher, dabbling briefly with the Destroyer and Alchemist classes.

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