It's now Christmas Eve here in Australia, so you mightn't see much activity at GU for a few days, but I wanted to take a moment to thank all of our readers for our busiest year in the history of the community. Despite our unusual twelve days of downtime, nearly 700,000 unique visitors stumbled across GU, 150,000 of which have been returning readers - so a special thanks to you. We wish you a merry festive season and look forward to writing for you, chatting with you and playing alongside you in 2012...

I've been plagued by Minecraft crashing, "running out of memory", on my Win7 64 install for months. I finally decided to fix the problem by using 64-bit Java.

• Open Internet Explorer 64-bit.
• Go to Sun Java (java.com).
• It should auto detect your 64-bit browser and let you download 64-bit

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Minecraft is already doing a roaring trade on Sony's Xperia Play, but that exclusivity is about to wind up. Mojang has sent word that their immensely popular indie adventure-builder title will be made available on all Android devices on September 29. Yes, today! Or likely tomorrow morning for us Australians due to the time difference. Minecraft Pocket addition is said to play very close to the PC version of the game, however it will not receive every update that the PC version gets. Rather it w...

Another Minecraft pre-release has been made available to gamers, featuring a focus on The Nether, Minecraft's version of hell. I'm not entirely sure why we keep calling these things "leaks" however, as it was linked to by a Minecraft developer, Jens Bergensten, via his Twitter account. Seems pretty official to me! Jens revealed that the update would add "two new hostile mobs," one of which "will (nearly) force you to get better upgrades. If you want to fight it, that is." ...

Minecraft's "Adventure Update" has officially arrived, previously only available through semi-official channels after an unexpected leak last week. If you already have Minecraft on your system there's no need to download a new client, just launch your existing version and it'll update itself for you. Minecraft 1.8 adds these key features to the game: * New biomes: You'll encounter new scenery like swamps, forests, oceans, rivers, caves, underground dungeons, and abandoned mines. There are treas...

You're undoubtedly aware, if you're a keen participant of any gaming forum or online games service, that there has been a sharp spike in security breaches over the past few weeks. The biggest is of course the PlayStation Network, but since then we've seen attacks on Codemasters, Minecraft, EVE Online, The Escapist and Bethesda. BioWare is the next victim on the list with 18,000 user accounts on the Neverwinter Nights forum hacked....

Minecraft hysteria is sweeping the globe, but given that it's still in development infancy, there's a lot to be added and improved. An October 31st update will see a number of big improvements including scarier monsters that will provide a real challenge, and torches that will die - meaning you'll need to reignite them with flint or build everlasting lanters instead. Not only that, but fishing rods will finally be of use with the ability to catch fish, and you'll be able to craft a watch to keep track of time too....