Firing back at Google+, Facebook has rolled out a series of new features to enhance game playing experiences on its platform, enhancing screen real estate and providing a real-time game news ticker.

Half-Life, Portal and Left 4 Dead developer Valve has announced Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, a sequel to the popular tactical multiplayer team-based shooter, available for consoles and computers next year.

Irrational's Ken Levine and his team share what their approach to building compelling characters -- particularly villains like Andrew Ryan -- has in common with traditional theater process.

At the Gamasutra-attended Edinburgh Interactive conference today, Jagex CEO Mark Gerhard discussed the multiplayer revolution, noting that hit title Runescape used viral growth rather than real marketing.

In Gamasutra's latest feature interview, Diablo III game world designer Leonard Boyarsky talks about how his experiences working on the Fallout series

At the Gamasutra-attended Edinburgh Interactive festival today, Eidos president Ian Livingstone discussed with a panel of industry experts whether the UK games industry is "one life away from a Game Over."

"We don’t spend a lot of time worrying about them, we worry about us," said Facebook's game boss Sean Ryan about Google+ on Friday, who criticized the latter's investment in developers as showing "favoritism."

GFI Software's senior threat researcher has warned about a Russian website that is apparently offering various low-cost versions of the CCleaner PC utility, which is widely used to remove unwanted files, fix problematic registry entries and the like. The only problem with the pirate site is that the software is infected with malware.

Here's an interesting – if cautionary – tale of how an Apple store in Canada apparently refused to hand back a stolen iPhone to a woman, despite police and Apple's database as confirming the hardware was registered to her.

Sophos has warned LinkedIn users of the need to be aware of a change to the business social networking site's privacy policy, apparently allowing the site to use member's names and photos in promotional advertisements. The change, says the IT security vendor, allows LinkedIn to use the information and pictures by default, meaning that users have to opt out of seeing their names and photos in the site's advertisements.

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) has notified 75,000 students and staff members that their personal information, including social security numbers, may have been compromised as the result of a data breach.