| Diablo III announced | |
| Posted by play_boy_2000 (2 Comments) | Tue Jul 1st '08 05:00:33 AM |
 Need I say more? (I'll try to find something quotable later to fill this space) |
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| News Source: Blizzard | Genre: Gaming |
| IRS to tax your in-game gold inevitable! | |
| Posted by joe (0 Comments) | Tue Dec 5th '06 11:08:26 PM |
 NEW YORK--If you are a hardcore player of virtual worlds like World of Warcraft, Second Life, or EverQuest II, IRS form 1099 may soon take on a new meaning for you.That's because game publishers may well in the not-too-distant future have to send the forms--which individuals receive when earning nonemployee income from companies or institutions--to virtual-world players engaging in transactions for valuable items like Ultima Online castles, EverQuest weapons, or Second Life currency, even when those players don't convert the assets into cash. Most governments are only beginning to become aware of the substantial economic activity in online games, but the games' rapid growth and the substantial value of the many virtual assets changing hands in them is almost certain to bring them into the popular consciousness. "Given growth rates of 10 to 15 percent a month, the question is when, not if, Congress and IRS start paying attention to these issues," said Dan Miller, a senior economist with the Congress' Joint Economic Committee, who is also a fan of virtual worlds. "So it is incumbent on us to set the terms and the debate so we have a shaped tax policy toward virtual worlds and virtual economies in a favorable way." Miller's comments came during a Saturday panel called "Tax and Finance" at the State of Play/Terra Nova symposium, the fourth annual gathering at New York Law School of academics, lawyers, and other scholars to talk about the legal, social, and economic issues surrounding virtual worlds. The panel was formed in the context of recent questions--first raised by author Julian Dibbel in his book Play Money and in an article he wrote earlier in Legal Affairs magazine--about whether the transfer of virtual assets, or players' acquisition of virtual loot by, for example, killing monsters, creates taxable events. "If you haven't misspent hours battling an Arctic Ogre Lord near an Ice Dungeon or been equally profligate spending time reading the published works of the Internal Revenue Service," Dibbell's article began, "you probably haven't wondered whether the United States government will someday tax your virtual winnings from games played over the Internet. The real question is: Why hasn't it happened already?" And while Miller's committee began examining these issues in October, his comments Saturday suggested there could be wider future congressional oversight and a revised IRS tax policy. That's in spite of the fact that Miller said his committee, and Congress in general, is not out to gouge virtual-world players. "The Joint Economic Committee is not seeking to impose a new tax on virtual economies," Miller said. "We have a very clear record of supporting lower taxes in free market." Meanwhile, Miller's fellow panelists also weighed in Saturday on Dibbel's question, and came at it from several different perspectives. First up was William LaPiana, a wills, trusts, and estates professor at New York Law School. He approached the question by examining whether estate taxes would accrue on the transfer to an heir of a sizable collection of valuable virtual assets. LaPiana said that there is little question that the transfer of such assets could be taxable, since it is property. However, he did say that the taxes would accrue only if the total value of the estate's assets, at the time of death, exceeded the limit set by the state in which the deceased had lived. In most cases, he said, that amount is $2 million, though some states, like New York and New Jersey, have lower limits... Read more: Gamespot |
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| News Source: Gamespot | Genre: Gaming |
| 3DMark06 Available Today | |
| Posted by play_boy_2000 (6 Comments) | Wed Jan 18th '06 03:48:01 PM |
 IT'S BEEN a while since we've seen a new 3Dmark. Dell loves it, it can give you a single performance number that doesn't mean anything in the real world but still people really do care about the 3Dmark05 score. If you can get 10,000 in 3Dmark05 with default settings, that means that you have a top graphic card, if you can get more than that you have at least two cards using SLI or Crossfire. That number is just a matter of pride, it is a hall of fame. The new benchmark has been distributed and all reviewers are waiting is for the NDA kill signal to go live with the first scores. It is a massive file, over 500 megabytes, and it's probably going to kill most of the servers tomorrow. I can see a lot of bandwidth falling away in the next few days. We saw some pictures and it looks really nice and of course we will use it as we kind of like this crazy number madness. Once we get our hands on it we will let you know how it will run on some of the cards we have in the lab. Available for download here |
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| News Source: The Inquirer | Genre: Gaming |
| World of Warcraft 1.6 Released | |
| Posted by joe (4 Comments) | Wed Jul 13th '05 01:53:36 PM |
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The World of Warcraft team is happy to announce the release of the new 1.6 content patch! Highlights of patch 1.6: You can read the entire patch notes here. Download from the superfast Salmon servers here. |
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| Genre: Gaming | |
| Age of Empires MMO? | |
| Posted by James (3 Comments) | Tue Jul 12th '05 10:53:22 PM |
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The rumor mill continues to churn as the homepage for Ensemble Studios, the creators of the upcoming Age of Empires III, lists a job opening for an "experienced server architect to assist in creating a world-class massively multiplayer game." Is a Blizzard style MMORPG venture in store for Ensemble and Microsoft Game Studios after the success of the wildly popular World of Warcraft? All signs point to Ensemble having its sights set on a massively multiplayer game, but what style of game they're looking to create is not clear. While an attempt at a WoW style product is definitely a possibility, nothing could be confirmed at this point. Still, it is an intriguing prospect for fans of the series and the RTS genre. |
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| News Source: Gamespot | Genre: Gaming |
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