With Kickstarter becoming especially popular in the gaming sector, it’s no surprise that gaming behemoth EA wants a piece of the action. To that end, the company is waiving any distribution costs on Origin for titles that have been successfully crowd-funded. Any costs associated with distribution will be completely free for 90 days.

Currently, Origin boasts a userbase of 12 million gamers worldwide.

“The public support for crowd-funding creative game ideas coming from small developers today is nothing short of phenomenal,” said Origin senior VP David DeMartini. He added, “It’s also incredibly healthy for the gaming industry. Gamers around the world deserve a chance to play every great new game, and by waiving distribution fees on Origin we can help make that a reality for successfully crowd-funded developers.”

Notably, inXile Entertainment has already jumped on board to take advantage of this distribution deal on a non-exclusive basis. Wasteland 2, a post-apocalyptic that raked in over 2.9 million from Kickstarter backers, is headed to Origin – joining the previously announced Steam and DRM free release. Whatever gripes you may have with Origin, you have to admit this is a nice initiative from EA – especially since it comes with no strings attached. Interested parties can fill out the application form over on EA’s site for more information.

Famed adventure game developer Telltale Games has reported that The Walking Dead Episode 1: A New Day has officially hit the one million sales mark. That’s awesome news for both Telltale and The Walking Dead, as the game was received quite well by gamers. What that means is that most of those one million sales are made up of satisfied fans who got a great game.

According to Telltale, The Walking Dead is its fastest-selling series. Episode 1 topped sales charts across Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, and Steam, and because this is just the first of five episodes in the series, we can definitely expect The Walking Dead to continue to rake in revenue for the folks making the games.

Currently, Telltale is planning to release The Walking Dead for iOS platforms this summer. Additionally, Episode 2: Starved for Help is scheduled to land on Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, PC, and Mac next month. Here’s hoping the next chapter in the series is as great as Episode 1, so the franchise can continue selling well, and so fans of The Walking Dead can keep getting content worth being stoked about.

Publisher 2K Games has revealed full details on two special edition bundles for the Gearbox-developed FPS/RPG Borderlands 2. The first is the Deluxe Vault Hunter’s Collector’s Edition, which is priced at $99.99. You’ll get Borderlands 2, Marcus Kincaid bobblehead, Inside the Vault: The Art & Design of Borderlands 2 art book, set of stickers, map of Pandora, download code for a digital comic book, and extra in-game goodies.

The second bundle is the Ultimate Loot Chest Limited Edition, which sports a hefty $149.99 price tag. It’s hefty for a reason, though, because it includes everything from the first bundle, and it also comes packed with a steel book case, Creatures of Pandora ID chart, set of lithograph postcards, field notes by Sir Hammerlock, cloth map of Pandora, and a numbered certificate of authenticity. Also, this bundle is totally going to include a red loot box replica, which easily makes that $149.99 justifiable. I mean, it’s a freaking loot box, people! Just like in the game!

Borderlands 2 is currently scheduled to land on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC on September 18. Both special edition bundles will be available across all three platforms, so you don’t need to worry about being snubbed if you prefer one console over the other. And because we have a few months until the game launches, that gives us plenty of time to save up our hard-earned coins for one of these two sets. Seriously, though, that red loot box is going to be awesome.

Gamers are irate over the fact that they were unable to play Diablo III last night. Servers were down, and players weren’t allowed to enter the game, even if they wanted to play on their own. This is due to Diablo III‘s required internet connection, which bars any players from entering the game’s world unless they’re online.

Additionally, Blizzard’s DRM tomfoolery isn’t helping, and this has become one of the main reasons for some huge criticism among players. As a result, Diablo III has received a massive amount of negative fan reviews on Metacritic. Gamers are calling the title a disaster, and they even go so far as to unleash their verbal hatred for its gameplay and graphics, with people saying that the game is boring and repetitive, all the while failing to deliver decent visual design.

I haven’t had the chance to play Diablo III, and because I mainly use my rig to play indie games, the chances of that happening are pretty slim. But wow, guys, is the game really that bad? Does it deserve the 3.6/10 rating that it’s gotten from gamers on Metacritic? If so, I’m glad I never invested any time into the series, because this just seems like one steaming pile of disappointment.

GPU manufacture NVIDIA today announced GeForce Grid, a cloud gaming platform capable of “streaming next-generation games to virtually any device, without the lag that hampers current offerings.” The tech leverages NVIDIA’s Kepler-based family of graphics processors to deliver low latency gaming over the cloud. A single Grid instance can simultaneously encode up to eight game streams, allowing providers to scale efficiently with less overhead in regards to power and costs.

What’s under the hood? A Grid GPU boasts 3,072 CUDA cores — the same as NVIDIA’s flagship GTX690 card. It also includes 8GB of VRAM, with memory and shader performance clocking in at 320 GB/sec and 4.7 TFLOPS, respectively. The wattage rating comes in at a respectable 250W — reasonable when you consider how much power the card is packing.

Impressively, with the Grid tech, NVIDIA says server power-consumption per game stream has been reduced to about one-half that of previous implementations. Under ideal conditions, the Grid platform reduces server latency to as little as 10 milliseconds. According to NVIDIA, “gamers will feel like they are playing on a gaming supercomputer located in the same room. Lightning-fast play is now possible, even when the gaming supercomputer is miles away.”

OnLive competitor Gaikai will be one of the first providers to deploy the new tech. Additionally, several industry figures and developers have praised NVIDIA’s latest effort.

“Cloud has the potential to deliver an even more powerful experience in the future by enabling ultra-high-end GPUs like the GeForce GTX 680 to stream ultra-high-quality graphics such as those made possible by UE4 to a huge range of devices, well beyond console capabilities. The result will be that more people can enjoy EPIC’s games on more devices at higher quality,” said Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney.

“It is exciting to watch how cloud gaming is becoming mature and gives better and better user experience — and NVIDIA’s GeForce GRID technology is example of it. We are looking forward to see how cloud computing using this technology will change the future of gaming and the overall gaming experience and how it will affect consoles and PCs,” said CD Projekt RED lead programmer Bartlomiej Wronski.

Many have questioned the viability of cloud-driven gaming platforms in the past, but it goes without saying that NVIDIA’s Grid tech looks to be a game-changer. Going forward, it’ll be exciting to see how the platform evolves.

The Xbox 360 adaption of Minecraft has already proved itself a hit on Xbox Live, selling more than any other title in the first 24 hours of availability. On top of that, it was also profitable in its first hour of release. Now Microsoft has taken the opportunity to gloat some more, announcing that the title has tipped one million in total sales – one week after release.

Additionally, Microsoft PR guru Major Nelson reveals that a whopping 5.2 million hours have been spent in the game, with a total of 2.4 million hours going towards the multiplayer component. To date, 4 million multiplayer sessions have been created. Impressive statistics all around.

Clearly, console gamers were frothing at the mouth for Minecraft. Here’s hoping 4J Studios deliver on their promise to bring the Xbox edition up to parity with its PC brethren, which can look really nice with a few graphical enhancements as shown in the screenshot above.

Jetpack Joyride is an addictive little iOS game that manages to deliver a compelling experience that’s both worthwhile and rewarding. The game strays away from the model that plagued mobile titles in the past, and though it’s certainly a simple game with intuitive controls, it still manages to capture gamers’ attention and gives them a reason to care about the mobile gaming scene.

Now, developer Halfbrick is taking the addictive gem to Facebook to reach an even wider audience. While this version of Jetpack Joyride is technically in beta, it still feels like the complete experience found on iOS devices. Power-ups, coins, and obstacles are all there to deliver a fast-paced runner experience that’s really entertaining. And if you’re wondering about the missions and achievements, those are in the Facebook version of Jetpack Joyride, too.

I only got a chance to play a bit of the game on a friend’s iPad not too long ago, but in those few short sessions, I fell in love with Jetpack Joyride. Now that the game is on Facebook, I’ve taken the liberty of seeing if it’s as worthy of my time as the original and, well, let’s just say this post was supposed to go live a lot earlier. I know what I’ll be playing this weekend.

Street Fighter X Tekken launched on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in March to positive reviews. The game is now officially available on the PC via digital download.

You can currently download Street Fighter X Tekken at any major digital download site for $49.99. The game includes 38 fighters from both the Street Fighter and Tekken universes, and it features all of the game modes from its console brethren. Additionally, the PC port will also sport 3D functionality.

I actually didn’t enjoy Street Fighter X Tekken at first, mainly because I found the gems system to be too much of an exercise in boredom and monotony. Still, if you dig deep enough, you definitely get a dedicated fighter that showcases Capcom’s expertise in the genre. If you have yet to play Street Fighter X Tekken but you’ve been meaning to, it wouldn’t hurt to look into the PC version. It is $10 cheaper after all.

Blizzard and Valve jointly announced today that they’ve come to terms over the use of the DOTA mark in upcoming products. Under the agreement, Valve will continue to leverage the DOTA mark commercially – which means DOTA 2 will remain unaffected —  while Blizzard “will preserve noncommercial use of DOTA for its community with regard to player-created maps for Warcraft III and StarCraft II.” Additionally, in accordance with the agreement, Blizzard DOTA has been renamed Blizzard All-Stars.

“Both Blizzard and Valve recognize that, at the end of the day, players just want to be able to play the games they’re looking forward to, so we’re happy to come to an agreement that helps both of us stay focused on that,” said Rob Pardo, Blizzard’s executive VP of game design.

He added, “As part of this agreement, we’re going to be changing the name of Blizzard DOTA to Blizzard All-Stars, which ultimately better reflects the design of our game. We look forward to going into more detail on that at a later date.”

“We’re pleased that we could come to an agreement with Blizzard without drawing things out in a way that would benefit no one,” said Valve boss Gabe Newell. “We both want to focus on the things our fans care about, creating and shipping great games for our communities.”

Rockstar is running a promotion in which gamers can score a free copy of Midnight Club 2 on Steam. Released back in 2003 — it’s an oldie, but nothing beats free, right? In order to be eligible, all that’s required is joining the official Rockstar Community group on Steam by 6pm GMT on May 15.

Those that join up will receive a free copy of the game by May 29. It’s non-giftable, so you’ll receive nothing provided you already own the title, unfortunately.

Oh, and according to the Steam page for Midnight Club 2, it’s currently not supported on Windows 7 or Vista. There’s a workaround outlined here, one that comes at the expense of disabling a built-in security feature. Here’s hoping Rockstar has a compatibility patch in the works for the majority of us running on a somewhat recent OS.