Welcome to the Friday Tech Roundup! Contained herein is a weekly dose of some of the best tech news from across the Internet, rounded up for your edification and entertainment. Read on for all the details of Windows 8.1, Nintendo’s method of monetising fan videos, and the $325,000 burger that you probably wouldn’t want to eat.

Have you ever taken a particular interest in a game that is, at base, really not that good and in fact pretty awful? I know some of you have, you Alpha Protocol-loving goons (AMBLE TOWARDS MY PERSON, BROTHERS). The reasons for this are strange but powerful, like whatever passes for Tyrion’s sex appeal. Something beyond the dodgy mechanics and screaming imperfection calls to your gamer’s soul, or maybe even beyond that too. There is a unique setting at play, or characters that speak louder than what follows before and after them, or a particular sheen of fantasy rarely – if ever – explored by the “brown” and “military” status quo.

All three of those things apply to one of my most enduring and troubled romances in vidya. You see, I love Clive Barker’s Jericho.

You know what I love? Rough games. The games that have a personality bigger than their budget. The games that are by no means ‘perfect’ but which are full of great ideas. The games that, instead of being polished to a fine sheen, still have some jagged edges and, consequentially, a unique shape and a personal feel.

If BioWare had shown Kelly in the trailers for the Mass Effect 3 Citadel DLC, I’d be pissed — because they completely left her out of the final product. I’m still pissed, but I’d be even more pissed if they had my hopes up.

A (somewhat) similar issue occurred with Aliens: Colonial Marines. The game was possibly the worst game ever made (in 2013). Our own review called it “an embarrassment that should never have been released”.

This was particularly cutting because the work in progress demonstration trailer had previously showed a far better game. Some gamers were so riled up that they launched a class action lawsuit against Sega and Gearbox for false advertising.

Opinion around the interwebs has been divided. While most players support the lawsuit, some just aren’t sure whether it has a chance of succeeding. Today, we’ll be looking at whether the Aliens: Colonial Marines pre-release demonstration trailer was false advertising enough to give grounds for a lawsuit.

Welcome to the Friday Tech Roundup! Contained herein is a weekly dose of some of the best tech news from across the Internet, rounded up for your edification and entertainment. Read on for all the details of the monstrous Haswell overclock, the realities of the quantum internet, and the door lock that automatically responds to your iPhone.

Toby doesn’t know anybody, and nobody he knows does either. So who is playing this game that sells by the billions? Where are they?

With Metro: Last Light due out shortly, I’ve been playing some Metro 2033 to refresh my memory when it comes both to Artyom’s story and the mechanics of the game. Before anyone chimes in to say that Metro isn’t an RPG — yes, thankyou. I already know that. I’m using the game as an illustration of something that I wished RPGs did, and that’s give currency some kind of real meaning within the game.

The bond of trust between gamers and administrators was broken this week, with massive consequences, Alex Walker writes.

Read on for all the details.

Welcome to the Friday Tech Roundup! Contained herein is a weekly dose of some of the best tech news from across the Internet, rounded up for your edification and entertainment. Read on for all the details of NVIDIA’s GTX 780, Paul Miller’s return to the Internet, and Virgin Galactic’s plan for relatively affordable commercial space travel.

I’m fascinated by the moral quandaries as often posed by games now. More specifically, the bad choice. I always bet on black. Always.

I love to cringe, but it’s more about: How far is this game gonna let me go? Really? It’s a game, surely it won’t be that far. Nasty surprises all. So far I’ve managed to put myself in some stupidly uncomfortable places. I worked negligently hard to get Heavy Rain’s worst ending. It was worth it. That has got to be the most depressing and confronting finale of your own devising I’ve ever seen go down in gameland.

I don’t want to spoil it but Ethan, y’know, he doesn’t find that kid. No one does. And Ethan, he can’t live with that.

What I find surprising is that most if not every single gamefriend I’ve talked to about this never bets on black. Ever.

You know what I love? Acting. I love games that encourage me to treat the world like a stage and my playable character like a role to perform. I love not using my character as a mere tool to do what I want to do, but doing what I think my character would do.

When a game makes me feel like I should act out the role of the character, it gets me out of the mindset that I should play in the ‘perfect’ or ‘most efficient’ way, and instead makes me feel like I should play in the way that best strengthens my own version of the story.

From the debacle that was 38 Studios, to the sadness of THQ’s closure, studios and publishers go bankrupt all the time. Much-loved gaming franchises linger in limbo as their publishers just… run out of money.

The only chance these games have is if a new publisher comes along and “buys the IP”. We see these words on gaming websites often. But what does “buying the IP” involve, anyway?