As part of their 2015 budget, Australia is set to introduce a new tax on ‘intangible’ digital imports which will include media from television and film all the way to video games.

Nicknamed the ‘Netflix tax’ by the Australians, it’ll add 10% to the price of any purchasable download from outside Australia and has been introduced to combat the fact that digital downloads are not subject to the country’s Goods and Services Tax.

Australian federal treasurer Joe Hockey said about the tax: “It is plainly unfair that a supplier of digital products into Australia is not charging the GST whilst someone locally has to charge the GST. When the GST legislation was originally drafted, it did not anticipate the massive growth in the supply of digital goods like movie downloads, games and e-books from overseas.”

The tax is set to add a further 350 million Australian dollars to the pot over the next four years. It’ll have an effect on Steam, Netflix and many other big online e-shops around the net.

Overkill Software had a success with their Payday games, and so far few seem to hate them for the DLC they’ve released for the second, Payday 2. They committed to supporting the game for a while with free and paid content, and now they’re permanently choosing to slash the prices of both the base game and a few of the older DLCs.

The news was announced over on the Payday 2 website, after the changes had already gone ahead on Steam. There were also a few details about the next update, Meltdown, which will be free and add a new heist, a new mask and some achievements as well.

“Heisters, we’re thankful for your support thus far. As we continue to develop Payday 2, working on additional free updates as well as paid DLC, we feel it’s time to adjust the pricing of both Payday 2 as well as all DLC released during the first 16 months of its lifespan.”

• Payday 2 — $19.99/£14.99 (33% off)
• Payday 2: GOTY Edition — $49.99/£29.99 (37% off)
• Heist Bundle — $13.99/£10.59 (44% off)
• Gage Weapon Pack — $17.99/£13.59 (40% off)
• Clover Character Pack — $2.99/£1.99 (40% off)
• The Diamond Heist — $3.99/£2.79 (43% off)
• Gage Historical Pack — $2.99/£1.99 (40% off)
• Hotline Miami DLC — $3.99/£2.79 (43% off)
• Gage Shotgun Pack — $2.99/£1.99 (40% off)
• The Big Bank Heist — $3.99/£2.79 (43% off)
• Gage Sniper Pack — $2.99/£1.99 (40% off)
• Gage Mod Courier — $2.99/£1.99 (40% off)
• Gage Weapon Pack #02 — $2.99/£1.99 (40% off)
• Gage Weapon Pack #01 — $2.99/£1.99 (40% off)
• Armored Transport — $3.99/£2.79 (43% off)
• The Official Soundtrack — $2.99/£1.99 (40% off)

Ever since Frontier announced that their popular game Elite: Dangerous was due to come to Steam, those people who backed the game on Kickstarter and have bought from Frontier’s own store having been asking the question: will we get Steam keys for the game too?

Originally Frontier wasn’t sure if that was going to be possible but due to high demand they seem to have managed to make it happen. Steam keys will now be offered to all PC players who either got their game access through the Frontier store or as a result of a Kickstarter backing. Result!

Thanks for your patience. We’ll soon offer Steam keys to anyone who bought Elite: Dangerous from our store. https://t.co/TjigCCcHlp

— Elite Dangerous (@EliteDangerous) May 8, 2015

“Thanks for your patience.” said community manager Edward Lewis on the game’s forums. “We’ll soon be offering Steam keys to anyone who bought Elite: Dangerous from the EliteDangerous.com store who would like a key, and to anyone who buys the game from our store in the future. We always appreciate it when you buy direct from our store because it means we can put more into supporting and developing Elite: Dangerous, but we know a number of long-time players and backers like to play through Steam and we think it’s fair everyone has that option, not just new players.”

The keys will be generated from May 28th.

There’s a countdown timer currently on the Black Mesa Research Website. It’s got less than 24 hours to go and has switched over to an emergency broadcast signal. It’s not the first time that the emergency broadcast has appeared on the site, having been triggered before at the beginning of this year.

Of course, there’s been rumours that the release of the retail version of the Black Mesa game is due to occur soon on Steam, especially since a Steam Workshop page for Black Mesa has also recently popped up containing seven maps as well as an eighth entitled “asdf0” – computer-speak for “this is a test”.  There’s no associated Steam Store page though that can be found. Either way, it’s pretty exciting for fans of the Source engine-based remake of the original Half-Life game.

There’s also an ascii image in the code of the BMRF.us site which some fans hope is a hint at Half-Life 3. Because there’s always some hope that the legend will finally come to pass.

The countdown ends at 9:47 Mountain Standard Time on May 5. Prepare yourself for news.

Recently Dota 2 has got an item called the 2015 International Compendium, which is purchasable from the Dota 2 store. Also recently Valve have put in place a set of gift restrictions on Dota 2 items so they can’t be traded, gifted or put into the game’s community market for a week after purchase. This has led to a lot of players who wanted to gift the compendium being forced to wait to do it.

Valve’s Daniel.J took the the Dota 2 subreddit to explain why though, and the answer makes sense: they’re fighting against credit card fraud. The week long period is in place to give Steam and the credit card companies enough time to stem the flow.

Daniel states that Valve are not a fan of having to restrict the gifting of items, but say that as of the moment they don’t have “a better solution” although they’re continuing to think of methods to hinder the problem without having an effect on legitimate buyers and users.

The fraudsters use stolen credit cards to buy the items, then resell them to other players at a discount. By the time the cards are discovered stolen, the items are in the market, the fraudster’s moved onto another account which can be new or stolen off another legitimate user and Valve are left picking up the pieces. It started in 2013 and ballooned during the last year, also leading to an increase in scam-related support requests where players had accounts stolen from them or never received their item. If too much credit card fraud occurs then Valve would be forced to not accept that method of payment anymore either.

It’s a sticky problem, one that Valve seem to be wrestling with. Hopefully the majority understand why this has happened and a better solution can be found soon to allow the gifting to re-commence.