The Atlantic looked at a recent update from the developers of the game Desktop Dungeons to discuss problems with gender bias in gaming , asking "can a work be racist or sexist if its creator doesn't mean for it to be?"
The developers of the game had recently been adding female character art to their game with the intention that they would be "adventurers first and runway models second."
While activly trying to avoid doing everything the "simple" way, they came into some problems due to subconcious shorthands creeping in.

"This adjustment turned out to be startlingly non-trivial - you'd think that a bunch of supposedly conscious, mindful individuals would instantly be able to nail a "good female look" (bonus points for having a woman on our crew, right?), but huge swathes of our artistic language tended to be informed by sexist and one-dimensional portrayals. We regularly surprised ourselves with how much we took for granted."

As GamingOnLinux.com reports, Valve Software - creators of Steam - have posted their Direct3D to OpenGL translation layer onto github. From their readme:

Direct3D ->OpenGL translation layer.

Taken directly from the DOTA2 source tree; supports:

Limited subset of Direct3D 9.0c
Bytecode-level HLSL ->GLSL translator
Some SM3 support: Multiple Render Targets, no Vertex Texture Fetch

This most likely won't build by itself and is provided as-is and completely unsupported. Feel free to use it for your reference, incorporate it into your projects or send us modifications.

Be wary that some parts are hardcoded to match Source Engine behavior; see CentroidMaskFromName() and ShadowDepthSamplerMaskFromName() in dxabstract.cpp.

ToGL may be useful for projects like Wine and for other developers looking to make the porting job easier. They have left in some hardcoded Source Engine stuff as it was literally ripped out from DOTA2.

The latest weekly HumbleBundle is a select of games from PopCap including the popular Bejeweled and Plants vs Zombies games. The caveats at the bottom for Origin, EA's answer to Steam, includes a term stating:

EA MAY RETIRE ONLINE FEATURES AND SERVICES AFTER 30 DAYS NOTICE

I am wondering at what point this becomes unacceptable? If I have paid for a game which has online "features and services" then shouldn't the company selling this support the online side for as long as possible, or am I just living in a pipe dream?

On a side note, it is a pity that this HumbleBundle doesn't come with the Android version of these games; and that they don't offer a DRM free download of the games.

Nintendo has announced the discontinuation of their Wi-Fi Connection Service for the Wii, DS, and DSi systems. Over 400 titles are affected, including Mario Kart Wii.

Engadget reports:

Services that will keep working on the DS after May include the DSi Shop, DS Browser, and DSi Browser, while the Wii keeps Netflix, Hulu, Wii Shop Channel, Internet Channel, Pay and Play and YouTube.

Could the slow sales of the Wii U be motivating this move? Will casual gamers be put off by this and hurt the company's future sales?