Free-to-play is the future for Crysis developer Crytek. While Crysis 3 will be a full retail release published by Electronic Arts, the developer considered implementing F2P elements into the upcoming shooter.

"We even considered a standalone free-to-play version for Crysis 2, to be honest. Launching the single-player as a packaged good and then making multiplayer free-to-play-only," Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli said. "We also considered that for Crysis 3, and it didn't happen again."

Read more: Will Crysis 4 be free-to-play? »

Crysis 2 should have melted off the faces of PC gamers everywhere. Instead, our faces were left intact. Crytek acknowledged the shortcomings of the game's original release and subsequently released an "Ultra Upgrade," which added fancy DX11 effects. An additional High-Res Texture Pack sharped the overall look of the game.

But for some, Crysis 2 was still not as blisteringly beautiful as it should be. That's where the MaLDoHD mod comes in.

Download: 2GB of brand new textures »

Crysis developer Crytek is looking to break away from the boxed model of video games and forge a free-to-play future for itself. Speaking at E3, CEO Cevat Yerli explained that once Crytek's completed its contracted boxed games, it'll only make free-to-play games.

Read more: DLC and premium services "milking the customers to death" »

With Crysis 3 recently announced, you need to hone those skills for the Urban Jungle. Now is the time to go back and check out the original two games in the series in case you missed them the first time around. GameFly Digital is discounting them this weekend

Read more: Save 75 percent on Brink »

EA let the cat out of the bag a little early with Crysis 3, but this morning issued a formal announcement, complete with the first screenshots. Arriving in Spring 2013, it'll send Prophet into a New York City become quite literally an urban jungle, where, yes, he will be breaking out his bow-and-arrow.

Read more: Shoot men in swamps, canyons, grasslands and more »

EA has finished 2011 dethroning Activision's Call of Duty series. Just... not in the way it wanted to. Crysis 2 has won the "honor" of being the most pirated game of 2011.

The PC version of the game was torrented about 3.92 million times, besting Modern Warfare 3's 3.65 million downloads. EA and its Partners games round out the rest of the top 5 with games like Battlefield 3, FIFA 12, and Portal 2.

Read more: Gears of War 3 and Xenoblade Chronicles catch pirates' fancy »

An anonymous blog materialized on the Internet last week, alleging that Crysis 2 developer Crytek had "unlawfully" fired a number of employees and treated staff as "disposable pieces of meat to be discarded at will." While it's unknown who's making these claims, Crytek co-founder Avni Yerli has piped up to dispute them.

Read more: The claims and Yerli's response »

EA has pulled no punches in its recent round of conflicts with Steam removing its games, using words like "restrictive," and not-too-subtly singling out digital distribution giant for being the only platform with those rules in place. Valve boss Gabe Newell has finally responded to the kerfuffle, and like a Facebook relationship, admits that the situation is "complicated."

"We have to show EA it's a smart decision to have EA games on Steam, and we're going to try to show them that," Newell said.

Read more: 'We have to prove we are creating value' »

EA is the "#1 publisher in Western markets," according to its latest quarterly financials. The company command a 16% segment share for the quarter ending June 30th, thanks to the success of games like Portal 2, Dead Space 2, and Dragon Age 2. All three titles have sold over two million copies each. Crysis 2 is an even bigger success, having sold over three million units. (Who needs Steam?)

NCAA 12 is also a strong performer for EA Sports, with sales up 17% from last year. Given the recent resolution of the NFL lockout, next month's Madden should also be a hit for the company.

READ MORE: Battlefield 3 & The Old Republic pre-orders »

Last month, Crysis 2 mysteriously vanished from Steam just as publisher EA was talking about securing more "exclusives" for its own new digital distributor, Origin. This turned out to be a rather unhappy coincidence for EA, who later explained that "Steam has imposed a set of business terms" incompatible with an agreement developer Crytek had with "another download service." Thus, Crysis 2 was ejected from Steam, EA said, not pulled. But why, exactly?

Speaking to Gamasutra, EA senior VP of global e-commerce David DeMartini has now explained the situation. Crysis 2 was taken down, he says, because its downloadable content was sold through rival service Direct2Drive, and not through Steam, denying Valve a slice of the pie. Read more »

As promised, Crysis 2's "Ultra Upgrade" is available today. But before you can start enabling all the new graphical effects on your high-end PC, you'll need to patch your game to version 1.9. Thankfully, you can grab that right here. Once that's done, you'll want to do grab the High-Res Texture Pack, and the Ultra Pack, of course.

The "Ultra Upgrade" offers gamers the ability to replay Crysis 2 with a number of enhanced visual effects including tessellation, water rendering improvements, high quality HDR motion blur, and more. There's also an optional high-res texture pack you can install, if you so wish. But, maybe you need to see if the upgrade is worth it before downloading the gigs and gigs of updates? Don't worry, Crytek has released a video highlighting many of the visual treats awaiting high-end PC gamers: Read more »

While the original Crysis has long represented the benchmark of PC gaming, its successor hasn't garnered quite the same reputation. Crysis 2 shipped without support for DirectX 11, making the initial launch of the game not quite as cutting-edge as PC enthusiasts would have liked.. It appears that Crytek is nearly ready to release an updated version of the game, targeted specifically for DX11 cards.

On June 27, Crytek will release a patch (1.9) and a few downloadable add-ons that take advantage of some of DirectX 11's more advanced graphical tweaks. The free "DirectX 11 Ultra Upgrade" pack adds "hardware tessellation, parallax occlusion mapping, and several upgrades for shadows, water, particles, depth of field, and motion blur." An optional "High Res Textures" pack will also be made available for both DX9 and DX11 users. (It should be pretty obvious what that add-on will do!) Read more »

[Update: 11:10] EA has told Giant Bomb that it didn't pull Crysis 2 from Steam. Rather, Crytek's shooter was pushed out by new Steam terms.

"It's unfortunate that Steam has removed Crysis 2 from their service," a company representative said. "This was not an EA decision or the result of any action by EA." Read more »

AAA games flee before The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings and L.A. Noire, fearful to release in the same week as these two much-anticipated games. Smaller, cheaper, downloadable titles and downloadable content are unphased by this, though. On that front, we're getting Sega Rally Online Arcade, the Honest Hearts DLC for Fallout: New Vegas, and Terraria, which I shall lazily describe as "kind of a bit like an action-oriented 2D Minecraft."

If you're somehow not interested in any of those, there's a a colouring-in game on DSiWare and some Wii titles that'll teach you how to read. Read more »

The NPD Group released its retail-only sales data for April 2011 last night, and it shows some positives signs for the industry. Physical software sales grew in both units and dollars for the first time since November.

Mortal Kombat took the top spot with 900,000 units, edging out Portal 2. It's worth noting, of course, that Portal 2 probably saw more than a few purchases through Steam, which isn't tracked by NPD and may never be. Read more »