With the release of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings fast approaching, Good Old Games--the sibling of developer of CD Projekt RED--is having a fun day of Witcher-related merriment. Along with beginning pre-loading and launching a DRM-free $5 version of the original, it's made a small technical tweak which, surely by coincidence, will help Australians dodge the sequel's censorship.

The most interesting bit of Witcher action today is the one which initially seems entirely unrelated--GOG announced that it will no longer use IP addresses to determine where a user 'is.' This will supposedly help those who are abroad when they make a purchase or whose location is determined incorrectly by the Geo-IP database, as well as respecting user privacy by not tracking un-needed data. Read more »

Australian attorney-general and violent video games opponent Michael Atkinson has resigned, the Sydney Morning Herald reports, potentially opening the path for an adults-only video games rating and an end to 'bans' and censorship down under.

Australia currently has no equivalent of the adults-only 'R18+' rating available to films for video games, which meant that games deemed by too mature for the highest rating of MA15+ could not legally be sold, rented or demonstrated--effectively banning them. Read more »