Digital distribution has been a hot topic in the video game industry for years – with developers, publishers and retailers trying to forecast when it will become a real threat to traditional brick and mortar stores.

New data, however, shows that time might be closer than many were expecting.

A new study from the NPD Group, which tracks video game sales, finds that in 2009, digital downloads of PC games essentially reached parity with retail sales. 21.3 million full-game PC titles were purchased online in the U.S. last year, compared to 23.5 million units purchased at retail stores.

PC games, of course, are a small fraction of console game sales, but they’re often a trendsetter in the gaming industry. And Microsoft [MSFT  25.95  -0.21  (-0.8%)   ] and Sony [SNE  29.56  -0.16  (-0.54%)   ] have both been ramping up the digital retail aspects of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, respectively, for years.

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The Battlefield: Bad Company 2 ingame store has once again given away info on the upcoming map pack. Map pack #5 is set to be released this Wednesday, July 28th and contains White Pass rush and Nelson Bay conquest. As with the previous map packs, this will be free for players who have entered a VIP code.

Quoted from Planet Battlefield

Obviously this is a Console Leak, however.

mxmstrnl
@zh1nt0 Is Map Pack 5 for PC aswell or just consoles? Is there going to be an official Blog Post with video for this?

zh1nt0
@mxmstrnl Yes, everything is coming up tomorrow. Mp 5 for PC too.

Source: Australian Bad Company 2 Community

Is VAC really as good as Valve claim?

Recently VAC banned a considerable number of players from Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 and possibly from other games as well.

Not unsurprisingly the forum posts started to appear with titles like ‘Banned – WTF I didn’t cheat’ and as usual the replies were equally helpful mainly pointing the banned person at the VAC FAQ which essentially says – TOUGH !

Valve have a zero tolerance policy on bans applied by VAC and will not lift any, they have in the past made a few exceptions but these are very rare.

Today some people have reported that their bans have been lifted with Valve blaming it on a software problem with steam.

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NPD Group has released some surprising figures regarding the current trend in purchasing PC games via digital download.

According to the report, in 2009, sales in the U.S. for digital download purchases hit 21.3 million, trailing behind physical unit buys at a close 23.5 million. At the same time, it was reported that digital downloads for PC made up 48% of unit sales and 36% of dollar sales for PC.

With digital download sales on the rise, it’s no surprise that retail sales would suffer as a result, as NPD also reports a 23% decline in retail sales. In light of the giant shift in sales trends, NPD is looking to find a way to quantify sales made in downloadable content, full game downloads, subscriptions, microtransactions, and mobile sales.
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Valve has announced that they will be releasing the game, Alien Swarm along with the complete code base FREE-OF-COST via Steam. The talented team behind the popular top down co-op mod Alien Swarm was hired by Valve a few years ago and was tasked to work on the Left 4 Dead Series, and now Portal 2. Valve is saying that they never forgot about Alien Swarm and wrote on its website.

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