Earlier today, I was talking about how I felt the game industry may not be completely recession proof and I just came across an article on G4 talking about how Silicon Knights laid off 26 employees.  According to the company, the layoffs are “temporary” and due to “expansion” reasons.

“These 26 individuals are hard-working and valued team members that we hope to bring back as we ramp up on our future projects,” said Dyack. Silicon Knights now bears a staff of 154 after the lay offs.

Via G4

written by Will Snizek \\ tags: Expansion, gaming industry, layoffs, silicon knights

ArchLord is one of the more popular free-to-play MMOs currently on the scene. They reached the half a million player mark back in May after Codemasters changed the subscription model to “free-to-play”. Episode 3: Spirits Awakening (expansion) was released recently and is free to download for existing and new players. If you’d like to find out a little more about the game, check out the official site.

written by Will Snizek \\ tags: ArchLord, Awakening, Codemasters, download, Episode, Expansion, game, mark, May, MMOs, model, Player, scene, Screenshots, subscription

I was searching around the net to see if any new KOTOR 3 news had surfaced, but came up empty handed in that department. However, I did discover that KOTOR era mineratures got an expansion of 60 different characters and the KOTOR Campaign Guide is now available. RPG players should rejoice that Wizards of the Coast now has these items on the market. If you aren’t experienced with traditional RPGs, you might want to check the Star Wars options out. Any fan of the films, comic books or video games will probably be interested in what they find.

To find out more about these items, check out the article on TheForce.Net.

written by Will Snizek \\ tags: aren, AVAILABLE, Campaign, coast, Department, era, Expansion, guide, KOTOR, market, Minis, net, news, RPG, Wizards

For those of us still playing the free-roaming racer (and especially for those who’ve left it behind), Criterion will be updating the title July 10, adding a new island, motorcycles to the mix, 70 freeburn challenges, and throwing some of the single-player crashing modes online.

Burnout Paradise dropped to glowing reviews, initially, but the fun waded a bit when gamers realized we might need a bit of direction to our racers, instead of the GTA-like structure the game took on. It’s still a fun game, though, and this new expansion should inject more crashing goodness to the title.

Oh, yeah…and PS3 owners can finally rid themselves of Avril Lavigne’s “Girlfriend,” as the option for custom soundtracks will be added to that version of the game.

Via Criterion Games.com

written by Carlos Macias \\ tags: Avril Lavigne, bit, Burnout, Cagney, Criterion, Expansion, freeburn, fun, game, island, July, mix, Online, Paradise, racer, title