Weekly Recap Oct 27th: The Fall Of Zynga, Eurogamer Fiasco, Square Licenses Unreal Engine 4

The gaming industry took a stroll through the mud, a dirty chicken factory and then ended up in a cesspool by the time the weekend approached. Yes, there was a whole lot of ugly bombs dropping in the gaming industry this week and it included things like Zynga firing a bunch of employees and shutting down a studio during the Apple press conference for the iPad Mini in order to cover their tracks, but their employees outed them about the scheme and well, outedness + internet = pitchforks and torches. If you think that's bad, Eurogamer was thrown into a rather awkward position when writer Rob Florence tried outing the corruption permeating the business but in the process found himself out of a job when legal threats came-a-knockin' and pretty much proved that outing video game journalism corruption will get you put out of a job. Oh yeah, and Square Enix is the first to license the Unreal Engine 4. These stories and more in this October 27th, 2012 edition of the Gaming Blend Weekly Recap.

Sunday

Dark Horizons Mechanized Assault Action Lands On Steam Greenlight A third-person mech shooter is looking for a few upvotes on Steam.

Super Meat Boy Dev Announces Mew-Genics A new game from Team-Meat indicates that they're still building and branching.

Medal of Honor: Warfighter Getting Zero Dark Thirty Map Pack Well ahead of launch, the game is already going to be receiving plenty of map pack DLC.

Dragon Age 3 Concept Art Mostly Generic Fantasy Well at least it's good looking generic fantasy.

Publisher Admits Game Review Scores Are Heavily Influenced By Trips, Parties, Swag Totally unsurprising, this news right here. Who actually didn't see this coming? It's like saying you didn't think Anderson Cooper was batting for the other team. Everyone knew.

You Die, Your Digital Game Collection Is Lost Forever The very sad truth of the ever encroaching world of digital games sales.

Disgaea Dimension 2 Announced For PS3 One of the most popular niche titles will be arriving for the PS3.

Monday

Medal of Honor Warfighter Could Be A Major Disappointment Says Analyst Given the pre-release buzz...(or lack thereof) some analysts believe that the game could under perform.

League of Legends Season Two Finals Watched By 8 Million Yikes, Riot's MOBA game is really hitting some big numbers...even more-so than a lot of television shows.

Borderlands 2 Graveyard.sav Virus Ruins Your Save File Forever Make a backup and lookout, otherwise you could be eating some humble pie thanks to the Graveyard.

Joe Madureira Leaves Vigil Games One of the bright minds behind Vigil's latest release departs from the studio.

Assassin's Creed 3, Halo 4 Multiplayer Removed From Redbox Rentals Oh boy, it looks like you'll only be able to experience multiplayer if you buy the full thing.

BioShock Infinite Industrial Revolution Screenshots Show Merchnical Puzzles More than 60 puzzles to round out the experience.

Borderlands Legends Revealed For iOS The game is making its way to portable devices, giving you some BL content while you're on the go.

Greatest Video Game Music 2 Coming On November 6th A collection of some of the greatest tunes from the latest games will be available in a soundtrack shortly.

Tuesday

Reloaded Productions Heads To kickstarter For Hailan Rising Separate from the APB team, this Reloaded Productions aims to make a new game on Kickstarter.

Minecraft 1.4 Delayed By Bugs Well isn't that a surprise? Actually, no it isn't at all. In fact, if you weren't expected bugs you probably haven't been playing Minecraft for very long.

EA's Wii U Games Require An Origin Account For Multiplayer Of course, EA needs control and playing any Wii U game online means you'll be playing via Origin.

Unfinished Swan Arrives On PSN This is easily one of the most creative games made this gen and it's finally available for PS3 gamers.

Borderlands Legends Officially Announced, First Screenshots Released An isometric shooter for iOS and it looks like a really awesome Fallout clone. Nice!

XCOM Enemy Unknown Slingshot DLC Announced Shortly after launch 2K has a line-up of new content in store for XCOM fans.

Mad Catz STRIKE 5 Keyboard Now Available Limited Quantities One of the coolest looking keyboards on the market becomes available over at Mad Catz' website.

Zynga Lays Off 100 Employees While Stocks Plummet Oh Zynga, will you ever learn?

Square Enix Licenses Unreal Engine 4 For Next-Gen Titles Big news for Square and the future of their titles.

Tomb Raider Box Art Shows Lara On Her Own Crystal Dynamics and Square Enix prep for the release of the reboot of Tomb Raider.

NeoGeo X Gold Offers Free Game For Early Adopters Anything NeoGeo related is probably worth checking out, especially when a free game is involved.

Wednesday

Construct 2 Now On Greenlight, Supports Windows 8 This is one of the most convenient game design tools out there letting designers easily and conveniently create HTML 5 games.

Eurogamer Joins The Light Side, Blasts Shoddy Gaming Journalists From Geoff Keighley to all the bottom feeders who freely promoted publisher content at the GMAs, Eurogamer let loose on all of them.

Darksiders 2 Abyssal Forge DLC Provides New Adventure THQ lets loose some new details on the upcoming DLC for Darksiders 2.

EA Says They Feel Bad For Zynga's Collaspe This is a really strange situation, but we all know EA is not feeling bad. We know Riccitiello is in his cave, wearing his cape and crown, laughing manically as Mark Pincus cries in a corner in a fetal position.

Realistic Fighting: The Game It's not what you think.

Borderlands 2 Level Cap Increases, New Character Classes Incoming From the man himself, Randy Pitchford talks about some upcoming goodies for Borderlands 2 gamers.

Blizzard Still Auto-Banning Linux Users In Diablo 3 All heil the Imperialist Nation of Blizzard. And here it is I thought that slogan was relegated to Electronic Arts.

Zero Escape Virtue Last Reward Out Now For 3DS, PS Vita A Japanese puzzler finds its way to the Nintendo 3DS and PlayStation Vita.

Grand Theft Auto 5 Art Shows Heavily Armed Exterminators Too bad the game doesn't look like this, but it still looks awesome nonetheless.

Halo 4 War Games Map Pass Provides Crimson Majestic Castle DLC New DLC detailed for Halo 4 even though the game isn't even out yet.

Skylanders Giants Just Dance 4 To Get Wii U Bundles This is great news for anyone already planning on picking up the Wii U.

DiRT 4 Teased By Codemasters After abandoning the FPS genre, it looks like Codemasters is ready to dig into the next iteration of DiRT.

Thursday

Halo 4 Is Microsoft's Biggest, Most Expensive Game Well, why wouldn't it be?

Assassin's Creed 3 Is Ubisoft's Most Pre-Ordered Game Ever Ubisoft is really pulling out all the stops for this game.

Shade 3D Modeling Tool Is Free For Unity 3D Engine Make and create your own 3D models with ease and the best part about it is that it's free!

Wii U Expected Ship 5.5 Million Units In First Year Iwata has some high hopes for the console despite production woes.

Eurogamer Writer Loses Job For Pointing Out How Much Video Game Journalism Fails Oh, sad times...sad times indeed.

Wizardlings Brews Some Free-to-Play Magic For iOS Another free-to-play iOS game makes its way to a handset near you.

Blizzard Offers Help To Zynga Employees Whie Taking Money From Linux Users Oh, how the mighty continues to keep making money while not quite falling like they should.

MSI GT70 Is First Gaming Laptop To Ship With Killer DoubleShot A high-end, high-speed gaming laptop comes with a high-end, high-speed dual network solution so you don't lag out while playing your favorite games.

Nintendo Wii U Will Sell For A Loss Nintendo won't be taking home quite the profits that they thought for the Wii U, but they'll work on it...hopefully.

Resident Evil 6 Patch Adds Better Camera View A free patch from Capcom...yay! Just be glad it doesn't have a price tag.

Friday

Dishonored DLC Drops This December Great news for gamers who have already barreled through the game and are now looking for something else to do. But if that really is the case, you play games way too fast and you need to slow your toll and know your role, jabroni.

Minecraft Halloween Skin Pack Announced For Xbox 360 Not that you can actually make the skins out...but, a new skin is available for 360 gamers.

Borderlands 2 Patched For PC, Shows Love To High-End Gaming Rigs Get even more visual goodness out of Borderlands 2 thanks to the new patch.

G4 Pulling Plug On X-Play, Attack of the Show Well, to be fair, without Olivia Munn it was kind of obvious that the show was going to die.

Ratchet & Clank Full Frontal Assault Out On November 27th The platform-shooter gets an official release date for the PS3.

TotalBiscuit Says Games Journalism Is An Irredeemable Mess An epic fail, as the too long; didn't read version.

Penny Arcade 3 Now On Mac, iOS, Android The transition from PC to Apple's devices has begun.

Grand Theft Auto Vice City Mobile Version Announced I sure hope Rockstar fixes the controls for the game, because they were straight-up awful.

Saturday

Black Ops 2 Matchmaking Will Not Be Region Based This is more good news for people who like to compete with others no matter what country they're from.

Silent Hill Book of Memories Co-Op Review The good part is that it has co-op; the bad part is that the game sucks.

Sorry, But I Just Don't Get Minecraft A shame really, because it's a really ugly game. Oh well.

Anarchy Reigns PAL Release Date Confirmed After Sega set out an official release date for North Americans for Anarchy Reigns, they've also confirmed when the game will see the light of day in European territories.

Drift Mania Championship 2 Review How well does this iOS title hold-up? And more importantly, how the heck can you drift successfully using a freaking touch screen? Well, it's a review you have to read to believe.

That wraps up this edition of the Gaming Blend Weekly Recap. This week rounds out with the fourth episode of Forward Unto Dawn for Halo 4. Check it out below.