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.

It’s not unusual for indie game updates to sometimes move in an… unexpected direction. Goat Simulator got an MMO update and indies generally tend to be more free to experiment. However, I doubt anyone saw I Am Bread’s latest update coming…

Today is May the 4th, a day known as Star Wars Day. To celebrate Bossa have applied a free update called Starch Wars to their indie bread-moving game that adds space combat. Really. There’s space combat in a game about a sentient piece of bread with the sole goal of becoming toast.

To access the new content you’ll need to have completed chapter one of the game, after which you’ll be free to jump right in. The battles take place against TIE fighters made of doughnuts and crispbreads, dodging and shooting them down in classic dogfight style.

“Following the destruction of the petrol station, the remaining crumbs of the rebellious fleet have been intercepted as they head to the planet of all-dough-naan. A lone freedom fighter with the call sign bread leader picks up the distress signal and speeds to their aid. And yep, you guessed it; he’s their only hope.”

The earthquake that hit Nepal as well as its aftershocks have been devastating for the people living there, as lives and homes were destroyed. In its wake the community of EVE Online petitioned CCP to launch a PLEX for GOOD initiative to help, and CCP have delivered.

“Along with the EVE Online community, CCP have been following the devastating impact of these events, and we were extremely humbled to see support tickets start to flood in and requests begin to appear on the EVE forums and social media sites requesting that we launch a PLEX for GOOD initiative to assist those affected.”

Players can donate their PLEX to CCP if they want to help, and each PLEX donated means that CCP will donate $15 to the Icelandic Red Cross to help victims of the earthquake. The PLEX need to be contracted to a special PLEX for GOOD character on a 14-day exchange contract, and the contracts will be accepted within 24 hours. To thank players who donate, CCP will gift two virtual t-shirts for every PLEX donated. The designs haven’t been finalised yet but they will be given out during a future release.

The PLEX for GOOD initiative has been used before by EVE’s community and CCP to raise over $340,000 to help those affected by natural disasters across the world. This particular one will run until May 15th, so get donating if you want to help those in need.

The Binding of Isaac is one of those indie games that seems to have done an awful lot right. The original game and its expansion, Wrath of the Lamb, were both flash-encoded games and terribly hard to complete. However with practice, skill and a little luck with your item pickups and enemy spawns you could emerge the other side feeling accomplished.

Rebirth came along a few months ago, a remake of the game that was not made in Flash and so performed a little bit better, as well as adding a lot of new content as well. Now there’s a further expansion for the original version that might make you go back to it if you’ve since wandered onto the remake.

Florian Himsl, the co-developer of the original version of the game has released an update that he promised was coming. Called the Eternal Edition, it adds a Hard mode, “eternal” enemies as well as addressing some bugs and fixing other problems. There are other changes to the game too, but knowing how much content the BoI games have in them anyway, it’s fair to say that they’re to be discovered by playing.

The update is free but does require the Wrath of the Lamb expansion to play. Will you be venturing back to the basement and the womb to face Mom again?

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.