Ahhh, a yearly tradition we don’t officially support, but always love to read about. Every year, torrent network Torrent Freak releases their official list of pirated PC games, giving us normals and the video game producing suits a bit of insight into which games are topping the torrent charts.

This year’s “winner” is none other than the highly anticipated Spore from EA. With unbelievable hype and quite some backlash due to it’s SecurROM DRM (easily bypassed it seems), Spore was downloaded 1.7 million times by Torrent Freak users, followed by other hits such as Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, The Sims 2, Assassins Creed Creed and more.

The full list, with place, name, amount of downloads and date of release.

1. Spore
(1,700,000) (Sept. 2008)

2. The Sims 2
(1,150,000) (Sept. 2004)

3. Assassins Creed
(1,070,000) (Nov. 2007)

4. Crysis
(940,000) (Nov. 2007)

5. Command & Conquer 3
(860,000) (Mar. 2007)

6. Call of Duty 4
(830,000) (Nov. 2007)

7. GTA San Andreas
(740,000) (Jun. 2005)

8. Fallout 3
(645,000) (Oct. 2008)

9. Far Cry 2
(585,000) (Oct. 2008)

10. Pro Evolution Soccer 2009
(470,000) (Oct. 2008)

Shuttle has always been a special company. Always affordable to computer enthusiasts on the VAR level, Shuttle is known for staying current with stylish industrial design on top of affordable budget PC hardware. But sometimes borrowing from other influences a tad obviously. Which seems to be the case (at least to me) for their latest media center PC, the XPC X200MC, which measures in at just a miniature 5.5 cm tall and (surprisingly) thin, about 3 DVD cases, I’d say. It features an Intel GMA950 on-board graphics chip with DVI and VGA out, multi-channel digital audio out, room for an Intel Core Duo mobile processor, room for up to 2GB of RAM and an integrated TV tuner card with remote for all your digital video or home entertainment needs. Oh, it also looks a little bit like a Wii. There, I said it.

Larger shot after the jump..

Read more of “Shuttle XPC X200MC looks familiar“

Hit indie MMORPG Minions of Mirth has won Game Tunnel’s technical excellence award, a nod to the single-developer project which was created over the course of 11 months. Using the indie games engine of choice, Garage Game’s Torque 3d, Minions of Mirth sports over 30,000 registered players, offers both Windows XP and OS X clients and even allows players to host their own persistent game servers, all run by a highly technical and experienced two man show. Kudos MoM, keep up the great work.

Minions of Mirth was created using the brilliant Torque Engine from Garage Games, a brilliant and expandable indie games engine which scales well for MMOs, RPGs, casino games, RTSs and much more.

Read more: GameTunnel.com’s 2006 awards | Minions of Mirth

Austrian publisher JoWooD has announced the sequel to their ‘eh’ selling tactical shooter, 2 years after shutting down original Soldner developer Wings Simulations. Though it was said that Soldner 2 would never make it to market, JoWooD seems to have shifted their position, sourcing the continued development to Germany’s gEasy Team Development, a remarkably odd choice considering there are quite a few talented development studios in search of work. But this is JoWooD, so, no surprises as usual. Soldner 2 is slotted for release in late 2007.

Read more: JoWooD announces Soldner 2 | gEasy Team

Armada Online brings an indie tear to my eye. A sci-fi themed MMORPG with some of the sickliest-sweet art direction I’ve ever seen, Armada takes the hyper real art style of Eve Online and gives it a coating of playfulness. Don’t be mistaken though, Armada is already a surprisingly solid game, featuring quite an in-depth items, weapons and stats system for the RPG nerds deep down inside all of us and a rapidly growing and enthusiastic community. Currently the world features 1 PvP and 1 PvE instance, though I expect this to grow as more players discover the joy of massive PvP space battles. Hopefully a Mac client is forthcoming, since this would be a nice addition to the paltry options available to us Mac users (who like to keep their PCs permanently shutdown).

Read more: Armada Online

JoWooD has launched the teaser page for Freakout, an upcoming freestyle skiing title to be released on the PC, PS2 and PSP platforms Q1 2007. Developed by Coldwood, who seem to be stuck making skiing titles for the Austrian publisher, Freakout aims to bring freestyle skiing to the masses, or at least to the countries where anyone actually cares about freestyle skiing.

Read more: Freakout | JoWooD

Gothic 3, the revered RPG from European developer Piranha Bytes and publisher JoWooD is finally out and from all I’ve been hearing, is selling like hotcakes. Nevermind that it was a totally rushed release, is buggy as hell and JoWooD’s marketing department still writes their press releases like a 14 year old kid at a LAN party hopped up on Red Bull. No no, we jest, we like the look of Gothic 3 and we really hope it helps JoWooD out of the hole it continually digs for itself. One of my favorite scenes so far from Gothic 3 though has to be the already infamous boars from hell. These little guys are brutal, sometimes causing the player to fall into an infinite death loop, or wreaking havoc on multiple NPCs at one time.

Watch Gothic 3′s boars from hell after the jump (for as long as the YouTube link lasts)..

Read more of “Gothic 3 boars from hell video, first patch already available“

EVE Online developer CCP Games has updated the information for the EVE Online Fan Fest 2006, a yearly festival in Iceland where fans are allowed to meet, greet and party with EVE’s developers and other fans from around the world. Among presentations and roundtables where the devs showcase the upcoming changes coming for the rapidly growing MMORPG, there is also a feedback session, where members of the EVE team from all disciplines address questions and feedback from players on subjects such as PvP, agent missions (PvE), the future of EVE (expansions, etc), and many other elements involved with the game. One particularly neat event is a developer PvP match, where the QA team takes on the development team in a massive PvP grudge match. We’re of course on QA’s side.

EVE Online’s Fan Fest 2006 takes place in Reykjavik Iceland, November 9th through the 11th with passes, flight and hotel packages available through the EVE Online web store.

Read more: EVE Online Fan Fest 2006

There is still hope for Star Wars Galaxies, somewhere. With the upcoming release of the Star Wars Galaxies: The Complete Online Adventures, Sony and LucasArts are trying to shore up interest in the once massively popular MMORPG by offering a 14 day free trial to new users (and presumably to the scores of people who left). Available now, I for one will be checking out some of the changes that are happening throughout the game, which I haven’t played since it began years ago and maybe see if I can live out my dream of being a jedi master.

Read more: Star Wars Galaxies offers 14 day free trial

The Icon Factory is offering a great little set of OS icons, featuring 8-bit style retro video game characters, from classic titles such as Pac Man, Dig Dug, Mario Brothers, and 17 others. Offering icon packs for both Windows XP and Mac OS X, as well as a Pixadex iContainer, there’s no reason you shouldn’t have your desktop overflowing with retro video game character icons. Oh, best of all, the price tag, free.

Read more: Arcade Daze – Retro video game icons for PC and OS X