As it does so like to do, Electronics Arts is shutting down for the online portions of another round of games it deems under-played. Servers will be going offline soon for games including Burnout Revenge, January 2011 release Spare Parts, and EA Sports MMA, one of the first titles to use EA's Online Pass scheme.

Read more: The games going dark »

R.U.S.E. players will get to experience the fun and frivolity of the nuclear arms race in December when the free downloadable content 'The Manhattan Project Pack' launches for Eugen Systems' strategy game, publisher Ubisoft announced today.

The Manhattan Project will add three new multiplayer maps, 'Twilight of the Gods' and 'Vesuvio' for 2v2 and 'Guns and Tulips' for 3v3. Perhaps more exciting though, are its two new multiplayer modes. Read more »

Shacknews receives a slew of new screenshots and trailers for upcoming games everyday. The most anticipated titles receive their own post, because we know you're eager to see that content. For the rest, we have the Daily Filter, a place to feature all of the media we add to our enormous database on a daily basis.

Today's Filter includes new media for R.U.S.E., Tron: Evolution, a new DLC trailer for Transformers: War for Cybertron, a "sound" trailer for the spooky Amnesia: The Dark Descent, a trailer featuring Rock Band 3 for the Nintendo DS, footage of World of Tanks, the debut trailer for Rulers of Nations as well as new videos for Kinect Sports, Kinect Joyride, and The Lord of the Rings Online. Read more »

Shacknews receives a slew of new screenshots and trailers for upcoming games everyday. The most anticipated titles receive their own post, because we know you're eager to see that content. For the rest, we have the Daily Filter, a place to feature all of the media we add to our enormous database on a daily basis.

Today's Filter features a re-cut trailer for James Bond 007: Blood Stone, a teaser for the upcoming XBLA title Pinball FX 2, a "re-imagining" trailer for GoldenEye 007 on Wii, a spoiler-rich recap trailer for the Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse season finale as well as new videos for R.U.S.E., Burn Zombie Burn, Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds, Atari's Greatest Hits: Volume 1, Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock, Ship Simulator Extremes. Read more »

Although Ubisoft's upcoming strategy title R.U.S.E. has seen two separate open beta tests over the last few months, it appears as though the game will receive a complete PC demo later this week.

According to online ads for the upcoming title (via BigDownload), a demo for the Eugen Systems-developed title will launch on August 25. There is no indication what the demo will include, other than a lot of potential bluffing. Or maybe we're lying. Read more »

R.U.S.E. publisher Ubisoft has confirmed that Eugen's strategy game will rely upon Steam alone for copy protection on PC, rather than using Ubi's dreadful own DRM.

"When R.U.S.E. is released in September, it will benefit from Valve's Steamworks API to offer the best community experience to players. Consequently, a Steam account and Internet connection will be required to activate the game, as per Steam policy," Ubisoft community developer Aymeric 'Wuzzi' Evennou explained. "For this reason, R.U.S.E. will not use the Ubisoft protection. Single player can be played offline." Read more »

Strategists are invited to participate in a "free preview weekend" for Ubisoft's upcoming RTS, R.U.S.E., which begins this Thursday on Steam. The preview is set to feature "a sizeable slice of the multiplayer," along with new, never-before-seen maps for 2 to 8 players.Gamers can select any combination of team-based matches or try their hand at all-out war in "free-for-all" competitions. Read more »

EA DICE's first-person shooter Battlefield: Bad Company 2 has sold five million copies since it hit PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in March 2010, Electronic Arts said today.

Amazingly, it seems that at least four million were sold during the game's first month at retail, as Electronic Arts noted that Bad Company 2 was among five games that sold over four million copies within its past fiscal year, which ended on March 31, 2010. Read more »

In a post on Facebook (via Kotaku), Ubisoft reveals that it has delayed its real-time strategy game R.U.S.E. until September "following the massive feedback we got from the community during the Public Beta."

Read more »

A newly-released, developer-driven trailer for R.U.S.E., Ubisoft's real-time strategy game of historic warfare, delves into a bit more detail about some of the title's more advanced multiplayer strategies, combos, modes, while also underlining subtle differences between the game's different factions.

Senior Producer Mathieu Gerard and Creative Director Alexis Le Dressay give a couple of examples of how the game's special team abilities, called "ruses" can be strategically combined to achieve better results in combat. Proper unit pairing is also an important key to successfully engaging the enemy. Especially neat is the ability to build a dummy structure that enemies will think is your base, while your actual primary structure is safely camouflaged elsewhere. Read more »

Let's take a brief break from today's media blitz and Game Developers Conference craziness to see what digital distribution outlet Steam has on offer today, shall we?

With a public beta of R.U.S.E. PC opening to all Steam users next Monday, publisher Ubisoft has issued forth the system requirements.

Changes made since the previous beta were also noted, as "we worked some time ago on the optimization of our IRISZOOM engine to make it runs smoothly on laptops." Read more »

A public PC beta of Eugen's "one of a kind" strategy game R.U.S.E. will be available to all next Tuesday--March 9, 2010--through Valve's digital distribution platform Steam.

"Everyone is invited to play," publisher Ubisoft explained via its amusingly named UbiLeak Twitter. "All you need is a Steam account." Read more »

The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences (AIAS) announced the winners for the 13th annual Interactive Achievement Awards yesterday. Developer Naughty Dog's cinematic action-adventure, Uncharted 2, was the undisputed star of the show, running away with ten different awards.

The Jay Mohr-hosted event, held at the Red Rock Resort in Las Vegas during the DICE Summit, highlighted the most impressive achievements in game development in 2009, as decided by industry peers. Read more »

Madden fans your cry was heard. After the removal of players who'd announced their retirement at the end of the season in the final Madden roster update, many Madden players, self included, were beside themselves. The move came out of nowhere and for a game intended to represent the season made little sense. Those changes, along with the many more to come in the off-season, will be reflected in next year's Madden.

Avid sports video game commentator pastapadre offered a rallying point in a poll asking for user opinions on the matter. Seeing results that ran 80% against the decision, EA Sports has recanted and plans to restore the retiring players to their rosters in a final final update. Read more »