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I've spent the last three weeks getting married, going on a honeymoon, diving The Great Barrier Reef and getting The Bends. It seems a lot went on while I was gone, but rather than spam your RSS, Twitter and Facebook feeds with a dozen new articles, I thought a summary of those stories would be best, prior to business as usual.

• Classic Syndicate infiltrates GOG on Jan. 19
• Max Payne 3 Trailer Explores the New Combat Mechanics
• Infinity Ward working on 'next-gen' Call of Duty?[

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If you've been keenly awaiting Jagged Alliance: Back in Action, the remake of the hugely popular mercenary themed turn based strategy game, you might want to consider pre-purchasing on Steam. For the duration of the pre-purchase period you'll score a 15% discount, bringing the cost of the game down to $34. There is also some Steam exclusive DLC involved for those of you that do buy Back in Action on Steam, which is due for release in just over a month. "Back in Action takes players to the fict...

While 2011 saw sales of boxed games decline yet again, by 7 percent in the UK as example, digital sales continued to soar. Game sales increased by more than 100 percent for the seventh straight year on Steam, delivering 780 Petabytes of data to gamers worldwide. This news arrives days after Steam hit five million concurrent users. Valve's Gabe Newell said: "Steam and Steamworks continues to evolve to keep up with customer and developer demands for new services and content. "Support for in-game...

It has been pointed out that Steam hit 5 million simultaneous users this morning. That's a new record, set with a substantial margin. Last September Steam set its previous record with 4 million users online at the same time. Comparatively, for the sake of fan-boy arguments, the highest number of concurrent players on Xbox LIVE was 3.3 million users on November 8, 2011. Of course, these numbers don't account for all PC gamers, just those on Steam at that moment. A breakdown reveals that the most pl...

Steam's holiday sales may be over, but Green Man Gaming's have just begun. Rising in popularity, this relatively new digital distribution channel kicked things off with 20,000 free copies Sniper: Ghost Warrior, subsequently breaking their site for a short time - but we're really not sure why, as the game is dreadful. Now though, you can find a ton of better games at great prices on the service. Batman: Arkham City for $25, Dead Island for $15, F.E.A.R. 3 for $8 and many more. The sale runs until ...

Australia's Origin store is now running a holiday sale, halving the price of digitally distributed games, excluding the game you really want. Battlefield 3 is only 30% off making it $56. There are some good deals though, Dead Space 2 is only $20, compared to the $35 sale price on Steam. However if you buy Dead Space 2 on Steam using a US VPN you can pick it up for just $10.

Source: Origin Holiday Deals...

Playdead's brilliant indie platformer, Limbo, has finally reached the Mac. It hasn't reached Steam on the Mac yet however, so if you were looking forward to utilising SteamPlay you will have to wait another three weeks. If you can't wait for January 13, you can find the 83MB game on the Mac App Store for $10....

Digital bargain hunters, ready your wallets. Now through Sunday, January 1, 2012 you will find a bundle of discount games on Steam for yourself, or to give as a gift for Christmas. Interestingly, there are some additional promotions being run, one of which gifts every game on Steam to one lucky winner. Every game on Steam.

For more information on the sale and the promotions, head on over to the news item at steampowered.com....

Yesterday it was discovered that amidst the Steam registry there were references to Remedy's Xbox 360 exclusive Alan Wake. Wasting little time, Remedy has now confirmed the PC port, is which set to be released in early 2012. Both DLC episodes, The Signal and The Writer, will be included at no extra cost....

Care of Koroush who runs tweakguides.com, NVIDIA has published a Skyrim tweak guide at GeForce.com. "The aim of this guide is to allow you to better understand and utilize all of the configuration options available in Skyrim, as well as a selection of advanced tweaks to enhance the game." It's a good one to check out for those PC gamers wanting to squeeze as much joy as they can from Bethesda's acclaimed RPG. You can find it by clicking here.

Thanks to AusGamers for the heads-up, and...

The debut day of Steam's 2011 Autumn sale include a bunch of ripper deals, including Mass Effect 2 for $5, Portal 2 for $10, Garry's Mod for $2.50, Limbo for $5 and the Oddworld Oddbox for less than $4. More deals will be made available every day through November 27, so keep checking back for new games.

Source: store.steampowered.com...

Super Meatboy is a fantastically fantastic indie title with some extreme, retro platform action. To celebrate the first anniversary of its release you'll find a great new pack of games on Steam including Super Meatboy itself as well as World of Goo, Braid, Machinarium and more. It's available until November 21 and is just $25. Additionally, this Saturday Team Meat will unlock "Super Meat World" which brings a huge number of user-created levels to to game. I already own most of those games, as w...

Steam has been hacked and it has been disclosed that credit card numbers and other personal information may have been put at risk. Valve know that the hackers gained access to the encrypted database with this information, but are currently unable to ascertain if this database was lifted or if they will be able to break the encryption. This comes just days after the Steam forums were taken offline, the cause of which is believed to be an exploit in the old version of vBulletin that was being run. ...

L.A. Noire: The Complete Edition is still 45 hours from release on Steam for Australia, priced at an astronomical $90. If you would like to play it right now and save $40, you can buy it using a US VPN from the US Steam store for $50. If you're not quite sure how to do that, have a quick look at this thread...