By Dan Stapleton, Assistant Editor

A couple of days ago, the game download service Triton went out of business. Initially, this was terrible news for everybody who bought 2K’s Prey through them, since as a form of copy protection Triton required games purchased through the service to check in with its servers before starting up. With servers no longer running, those copies of Prey suddenly became inoperable. This exact scenario has long been the worst nightmare of people reluctant to adopt digital distribution (including Steam)—what happens when a service goes under?

By Logan Decker, Hardstuff Editor

If you’re still saving up loose change and hawking that old Fender Strat to buy a dual-core system, you might want to sit down for this one. I spent some quality time this week at the Intel Developers Forum getting my paws filthy with the Core 2 Extreme QX6700, Intel’s new four-core processor, scheduled for release to hardcore gamers and really intense geeks this November, with “mainstream” procs shipping early next year under the Core 2 Quad brand. There were two systems available to me for preliminary benchmarking, identically configured except for the processor; the Core 2 Extreme X6800 in one and the four-core QX6700 in the other.

We've been getting isolated reports from readers who are having trouble with the Guild Wars mission and mini-pet activation code that we supplied in our November 2006 issue. Due to a printing error, there may be an extra "1" at the start of your code. If entering your code without the 1 results in an error message saying your code is already in use, please contact our customer service department at custserv@futureus-inc.com and we will gladly supply you with a new one, provided that you've included your non-functioning code so that we can log it. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience!

We hear some readers who got our October DVD-ROM edition are having trouble locating their free 14-day World of Warcraft trial key. Don't panic! It's tucked away on the bottom of page 73. Happy WoWing.

By Logan Decker, Senior Editor

So, yes, what you’ve heard is true: CPU maker AMD bought GPU maker ATI for more money than you, your children, and your grandchildren combined will ever see, with plenty left over to buy round-trip tickets on Virgin Galactic for everyone attending the Los Angeles premiere of Snakes on a Plane.

PC Gamer and Maximum PC are proud to present Showdown LANfest 2k6, a three-day gaming event to be held in San Jose, CA, August 25-27, 2006. Sponsored by Newegg.com, this massive 480-person LAN party will feature 48 straight hours of tournaments, contests, editor clinics, and exclusive access to highly anticipated PC games.

Update: FREE copy of PREY (provided by Triton) if you pay by August 1st!

Much more info after the jump!

By Dan Stapleton, Assistant Editor

Every so often, an article is handed in for editing with a line so incredibly yet unintentionally funny that it travels around the office at speeds that threaten to disprove Einstein's theory of relativity. Now, thanks to modern blogging technology, it can reach beyond these walls. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you today's quote:

"Broken World begins back in Aranna, one year after you faced Valdis in the Horns of Zaramoth." — Greg Vederman

Let this public humiliation serve as a warning to all those who would fail to update their End Boss column for three months.

By Kristen Salvatore, Executive Editor

Over the past week or so, subscribers have begun receiving our August 2006 issue, featuring, among other cool stuff, the exclusive scoop on Half-Life 2 Episode 2. In that story, I reported that the game would be shipping in Spring 2007. But earlier this week, Valve representatives stated publicly that the game is on track be out by Holiday 2006. So what happened?

By Logan Decker, Senior Editor

One hundred unfiltered cigarettes fell from the mouths of one hundred French viewers onto the floor as they watched a man wearing a skull-cap outfitted with electrodes spell out the word “bonjour” on a laptop just by thinking it. He was wearing what its inventors call the Brain-Computer Interface, or BCI, which groped around in his brain, intercepting electrical signals and transcribing them as characters onto a display. How this is done does not nearly freak me out as much as thinking about what I’d see on the screen if you put one of these things on my head. I would not want my mother or my young nephews present during such a demonstration, and certainly not my enemies or even colleagues of an opposing political affiliation.

But I would love to slap that cap onto the crowns of the U.S. representatives who shot down, in a 269-152 vote, an amendment to a telecommunications bill that would have given the FCC the authority to enforce “network neutrality.” I would love to know what they were thinking when they rejected the idea that, even if you only have a single telco servicing your area, or one or two ISPs to choose from, you should still be able to access everything on the Internet without these de facto monopolies or duopolies acting as gatekeepers.

By Chuck Osborn, Senior Executive Editor

I came across something the other day that had me laughing and crying at the same time. A major online retailer’s listing for the PC port of Resident Evil 4 (coming out in September from Ubisoft) attempts to describe the game’s “features.” Among its dubious bullet points are “’Aim and Shoot’ targeting for zeroing in on enemies with your weapons” and “use the Action button for better player control.”

By Dan Stapleton, Assistant Editor

Sorry we haven't been blogging lately, everybody. The weeks following E3 are without a doubt our busiest time of year, and we're all busting our butts to get the next issue out the door. Everyone here is running around like crazy, and to make matters worse, Kristen had a very untimely hard drive crash yesterday (everybody take note: having a RAID in a laptop is a recipe for disaster). Just bear with us, and we'll get back on the blogging ASAP, we promise.

by Norman Chan, lonely intern

If you’re at all in tune with PC gaming (or gaming in general, for that matter) you’ll know that this week is the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles. This industry only gathering of all developers, publishers, and journalists of the gaming world is a Mecca for every gaming enthusiast, whether you play on the PC, console, or even cellphone. From system launches to game title announcements, all the buzz about upcoming milestones in gaming happens at E3. I’m not talking about just watching demos of next-gen games, either. The massive show floor of the LA convention center will be stocked from wall to wall with kiosks that’ll let attendees actually spend hands-on time with games most of us have only read or seen screenshots of in magazines. Basically, any PC gamer not at E3 this week is missing out. And guess who’s missing out this year.

By Dan Stapleton, Assistant Editor

I’m late in coming to World of Warcraft – in this job you only have so much time to devote to any one game before something new and shiny lands on your desk and distracts you like a six-year-old that’s fallen off the Ritalin wagon. MMOs don’t really fit into this environment very well (my eight-month City of Heroes addiction not withstanding). But I felt that with The Burning Crusade on the way, I should probably familiarize myself with the world’s number-one online phenomenon – after all, can six million plus subscribers be wrong? (Answer: yes. Look no further than the "Reality Television" fad to see how something incredibly stupid can be immensely popular.)

By Logan Decker, Senior Editor

Like the Christmas gift that doesn’t arrive, like the fiancee who doesn’t show up at the altar, like the burning sensation down in the briefs after a wild night of passion, I was deeply disappointed that Ageia couldn’t get me its physics accelerator card in time for review in our July issue — I’d really been looking forward to seeing what it could do for games and gamers.

by Norman Chan, perpetual intern

I’ve spent the past four years of my life juggling dual identities as both a college student and an unabashed PC gamer. My experiences balancing those roles are, if anything, a cautionary tale for all undergraduates looking to have their cake and eat it too. Is it possible to maximize your college experience, academically and socially, while maintaining credibility as a gaming enthusiast? I refuse to accept that a love for Battlefield 1942 is immediate grounds for being cast as a social pariah. Sure, Counter-Strike matches on Thursday nights means a difficult choice between getting trashed at a frat or showing some high pitched fifteen year-old kid who’s the AWP master on De_Cbble, but frat parties are overrated anyway. And that’s not even considering midterms or term papers due the next day.