Planning a LAN party to celebrate the launch of StarCraft II (whenever that is)? You can still do that, but you'll all have to be connected to Battle.Net first. Blizzard has confirmed that the upcoming RTS game will not support LAN play to further build up Battle.Net as the multiplayer solution for their games. That, and to combat piracy.

The pirates have struck the X-mark again, claiming illegal booty with digitally ripped software. After hearing Rock Band: Unplugged's leaking into the Internet a month ahead of retail release, this bit of news brings another damper to the fight against piracy. It's been reported that The Sims 3 has now also found its way to torrent sites online, some two weeks ahead of its scheduled release (June 2).

The ESA board must have been reduced to tears of joy yesterday - to them, I'm sure, they now believe there is a god. This week, the Swedish court has found the four operators of torrent site The Pirate Bay guilty as charged for copyright infringement and illegal activities (digitally distributing illegal copies of games and media content). Of course, ESA is more than happy with this victory against the ongoing war on piracy - so happy, in fact, that they had to come up with an official press release about it!

British game developers have launched an all-out war against illegal file-sharers. They're not about to take piracy in the industry sitting down. But the music industry, another victim of the pirates, aren't backing them up on this cause. It's an apparent disagreement in approach and disposition.

Here's where Stardock's "Microsoft can't help PC gaming" theory takes a weird turn. Microsoft Game Studios considers both the Xbox 360 and the PC as the same gaming platform, though lately, some of the PC's big hitters didn't arrive due to their efforts. We all know Jack Keane, Sins of a Solar Empire, and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. surely didn't come from them. What are coming from MGS are Xbox 360 games. Where is Microsoft's true gaming drive? We'll tell you, it's likely not on the PC. Full story. Now.

We know that the copy protection scheme that BioWare and Electronic Arts implemented in the PC version of Mass Effect were for granting the convenience of not needing the game disc every time you play, and of course, for combating piracy. But the latest inquiries to the activation procedures would have you thinking twice about either convenience or piracy, because what we have waiting for you at the full story would either have you facepalming till kingdom come, or gasping out loud, "Piracy wut?"

As advocates of rewarding legitimate PC game customers instead of punishing them, Stardock has more than once stirred the gaming populace's apprehensions over PC gaming's pitfalls and it's alleged links to piracy. Today is no exception. The publishers behind the non-copy protected Strategy First's Galactic Civilizations, GalCiv 2, and top seller Sins of a Solar Empire from Ironclad Games, talked down more on blame piracy, and why even Microsoft shouldn't be at fault either.

Gaming piracy is a serious problem that seems impossible to eradicate. But is there hope for game developers? According to Atari founder Nolan Bushnell, there is, thanks to the TPM encryption chips that are being built into some of the latest motherboards. More in the full article.

We recently learned that BioWare won't use SecuROM's 10-day online re-authentication process. Now, we have word from EA that they'll take a similar step with Will Wright's upcoming biggie Spore. The SecuROM drill has been modified somewhat to give gamers more convenience while resisting piracy. More details come after the jump.

If you're familiar with videogame piracy, then you'd know about the harmful effects it can do to the industry, and in this update we hear about NVIDIA game boss Roy Taylor speaking about how it's unfair that piracy is still rampant, even though he believes we're at a point where it shouldn't even exist. All his opinions and statements about this matter after the jump, so read on and find out just what this means to you.