The biggest blow yet to the UK's biggest high-street retailer.

Following this morning's news that GAME's shares have been frozen on the London Stock Exchange, the firm has now announced its intention to go into administration.

Below is GAME's statement to shareholders:

"Further to this morning's announcement of the suspension of trading in shares of GAME Group plc, the board has concluded that its discussions with all stakeholders and other parties have not made sufficient progress in the time available to offer a realistic prospect for a solvent solution for the business. The board has therefore today filed a notice of intention to appoint an administrator."

What does this mean? It means that the company is in dire, dire straits, though the stores will stay open in the immediate term whilst administrators try to determine the future of the company – whether that's refinancing or, potentially, closure. Ultimately, an administrator's goal is to keep the company trading, but there's no knowing what form GAME could be in at the end of it.

We're currently investigating what implications for GAME and Gamestation staff. Hang in there, guys.

More news as we get it.

Have a read and discuss guys…

In this month’s closed beta event, we’ll do some early testing of the Guild Wars 2 microtransactions system. Our microtransaction content isn’t nailed down yet, but we have a good framework in place to support it. So, I’d like to take a moment to explain our goals and the system we have developed to meet them.

 

 

We believe in microtransactions because they fund ongoing development of the game in a very straightforward and open way. You, the customer, get to decide how much money you spend on the game after launch, based on how compelling it is to you. You get a complete and playable game no matter what, but we think we can provide additional content and services that you’d be happy to pay for. And when you pay for them, you help fund our support of Guild Wars 2 in a way that benefits all players of the game.

 

Here’s our philosophy on microtransactions: We think players should have the opportunity to spend money on items that provide visual distinction and offer more ways to express themselves. They should also be able to spend money on account services and on time-saving convenience items. But it’s never OK for players to buy a game and not be able to enjoy what they paid for without additional purchases, and it’s never OK for players who spend money to have an unfair advantage over players who don’t.

 

I know none of this is new; the original Guild Wars also had microtransactions. But microtransactions were an afterthought in Guild Wars, whereas with Guild Wars 2, we had an opportunity to integrate the microtransaction system from the ground up, giving players more options and more convenience without sacrificing our design principles. So, here’s what we’re doing differently this time.

In Guild Wars 2 we have three currencies: gold, karma, and gems. Gold is the common in-game currency. Karma, which players earn in-game but cannot trade, is used for unique rewards. And gems are the currency that’s bought and used to purchase microtransactions.

 

We have a new player-driven market that allows players to trade gold for gems and gems for gold. If you want something, whether it’s an in-game item or a microtransaction, you ultimately have two ways to get it: you can play to earn gold or you can use money to buy gems. We think that’s important, because it lets more players participate on a level playing field, whether they use their free time or their disposable income to do it.

 

MMO veterans will note the similarities of our system to EVE Online’s PLEX system. As in that case, our system takes gold trading out of the hands of real-money trading (RMT) companies and puts it directly in the hands of players.

 

We think that’s a great thing.

 

From a player’s perspective, RMT companies have all the wrong motivations: the more money they make from selling gold, the more they spam ads in the game, run bot networks to farm gold, and hack accounts to loot them for gold. Conversely, under our system, players have all the right motivations. If a player buys gold from another player, he gets the gold he wants, the selling player gets gems she can use for microtransactions, and ArenaNet generates revenue from the sale of gems that we can use to keep supporting and updating the game. Everyone wins.

 

We also like the tradability of gems and gold because it makes the rest of the game’s economy more compelling. We’ll have a player-to-player Trading Post in the game—it’s like an auction house but better—which we’ll discuss in an upcoming blog post. Because gems can be traded for gold and vice versa, we don’t need two different trading systems, one for gold and one for gems. In Guild Wars 2, everything on the Trading Post is traded for gold, but of course, somebody who wants to earn gems can just sell items for gold, and then convert the gold to gems.

 

We have always taken our responsibility to players seriously with the original Guild Wars, and we will continue to do so with Guild Wars 2. We believe the foundation I’ve described here is the right foundation for us to build upon, and we look forward to sharing more details with you in the future as we nail down our microtransaction content.

 

 

-Mike O’Brien

Yesterday, long time supporter of the station and, at one point, DJ (for the Guild wars 4th birthday event), Martin Kerstein of Arenanet, makers of Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2, has signalled the death knell of the community fansite, or at least their support for it

Let me point out the two biggest changes in the ways we interact with our communities between the original Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 right up front: we will have official forums, and we will not have a traditional fansite program.

 

This does NOT mean we will no longer support all our dedicated fansites out there! We will continue to work with fansites as we have done in the past, but in addition to “traditional” fansites, we will also provide a platform to support smaller, specialized communities/projects that would never have had a place in a traditional program, like blogs, machinima, etc.

 

Let’s take a step back and look at how community, gaming and community management have evolved over the last 6 years. When I started working on Guild Wars back in 2006, traditional fansites and forums were the main hub for fans to gather. Social networks like Facebook and Twitter were in their infancy.

You can read the full article here:  http://www.arena.net/blog/building-community

What do you think?  will you be sticking with your chosen fansite of choice or going official only?

Update: A representative from Overhaul Games stated that Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition will not simply be a straightforward remake of BioWare's original game. "We're adding new original content in the spirit of the original game," the representative said, as well as "maintaining all the awesome that is Baldur's Gate." The team behind it will include new staff, as well as team members responsible for the original games.

No word yet on what the game will look like, or specifically what else is changing. It was also confirmed that Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition will be released at a later date. Both this and the first Enhanced Edition will be made in a "re-forged version of the Infinity Engine."

Original Story: A new Baldur's Gate website popped up last week, and just yesterday a countdown clock began to tick down. But that timer is over, concluding with the announcement of some sort of new Baldur's Gate property.

Coming this summer, Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition will be developed by Overhaul Games. What it is is still unknown, though we're reaching out to our contacts right now and will update as more information becomes available.

Check this out guys, it's, umm, Different…