Things in StarCraft II land have calmed down a bit but there's still some excitement in the air about the game and about other PC game developments:

• You can now purchase and download the StarCraft II soundtrack via iTunes for $9.99.
• Is this a teaser site for Irrational Games' next title?
• AMD has released the new 10.7 ATI Radeon Catalyst graphics drivers.
• Steam has a sale of Everquest and all of its expansion packs in one bundle for $14.99.
• Steam also has Trainz Simulator 2010 on sale.
• Impulse has added some of Bethesda Softworks' older games to its line-up, although don't expect Fallout New Vegas to be added thanks to its use of Steamworks.
• Direct2Drive offers a playable Federation Ferengi as a free bonus if you get Star Trek Online from them.
• You can now watch that Ghost Recon Alpha live action teaser trailer on GameTrailers.com.
• Medal of Honor and Linkin Park? Apparently so.
• Just watch this. It's funny.

Starcraft 2 is finally out, but there are still some sitting on the fence as to whether they should get the regular or Collector's Edition of Blizzard's latest game. We got our mitts on the Collector's Edition and all the goodies inside, and we're taking a look to see if they are worth the extra $40 we paid for them. After all, $100 is not exactly chump change in this economy.

Last night was a huge night for the PC game industry as StarCraft II launched at midnight around the world in various countries' different time zones. Now developer Blizzard has released a video showing off some of the activities at the events for the release of the long awaited sci-fi RTS game.

The video shows the official Blizzard launch events that occurred in Seoul, South Korea along with Paris, France and Blizzard big "hometown" launch event in Orange County, California. As you can see in the video the official Blizzard launch events were well attended with lots of copies of the game being bought and signed by Blizzard team members.

By the way, our review of StarCraft II is coming along. Since, as we reported last week, everyone got the game at the same time it may be a few days before we will be able to completely go through the title's single player campaign, challenge levels and of course multiplayer.

If you wanted to get into the indie games scene but were afraid to do so, Direct2Drive has just revised its Indie Games Bundle sale for its customers. For a limited time you can get 10 of the most well known and acclaimed indie games in one shot for just $29.95. That's compared to a price of $134.50 if you had to buy each game individually.

The games in the bundle include World of Goo, Puzzlegeddon, Gish, The Maw, Braid, Cogs, AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! -- A Reckless Disregard for Gravity, Osmos, Machinarium and Crayon Physics Deluxe. All of the above games are good in our opinion and some are true classics. It's a deal that you don't have to steal.

The PC processor and graphics chip maker AMD is in a bit of a pickle. It makes processors that are second to Intel in terms of market share and while its ATI division has been making progress on its biggest rival Nvidia in terms of performance Nvidia's graphic chips are still the market leader for PC gaming. Now AMD has announced a new marketing program that's aimed specifically at PC gamers.

The marketing program is called Gaming Evolved and according to AMD's web site, the program is all about one thing, "Gamers Come First". The site adds, "We will listen carefully to gamers, create solutions and technologies that closely align to their wants and needs, and fulfill our "Gamers Come First!" mandate to the PC gamers of the world." The site also says AMD will listen to game developers as well, saying, "We will deliver the technical support and guidance needed to adopt new technologies like Direct X 11, and provide the indispensible business support that game developers need to help make their games a commercial success"." Big Download plans to contact AMD to get more concrete info on what its new Gaming Evolved program will mean to the PC games industry.

Sony Online has already achieved some success with its casual free-to-play MMO Free Realms. Today the developer has announced that it is now bringing that free-to-play business model to its EverQuest series with EverQuest II Extended. Unlike Turbine who turned Dungeons and Dragons Online completely into a free-to-play game (and will do so for Lord of the Rings Online this fall) EverQuest 2 Extended is being handled as a separate game from EverQuest 2 that launched in 2004. Sony Online states that EverQuest 2 will continue with its monthly subscription model and will continue to get updates and content expansions.

EverQuest 2 Extended will allow players to check out a large portion of the EverQuest II game world for free via a new download client that will allow players to start playing the game in minutes. However there will also be ways to pay for access to even more content. You can check out the rather extensive options for EverQuest 2 Extended at the game's official web site. The beta for EverQuest II Extended is expected to launch on August 17.

As we reported last week, Cryptic Studios has launched "Season Two" for its sci-fi MMO Star Trek Online. Subscribers to the game can now get the free content update. In addition publisher Atari has permanently lowered the price of the game to just $19.99.

Season Two adds a ton of new features and content to Star Trek Online including raising the level cap to 51, adding new missions for the playable Klingon faction, new "Tier 5" ship, mini-games such as Dabo, and the new Federation Diplomatic Corps that tries to explore and peaceable setting conflicts. Starting in August, new weekly missions will be added to the game that center on defending an alien race called the Deferi from a new threat.

Not surprisingly there's a lot of StarCraft II-related news bits for the first day of sale for Blizzard's RTS sequel.

• StarCraft II currently doesn't support anti-aliasing but PC Games Hardware has found a workaround for Nvidia GeForce card users (sorry ATI Radeon users; you are out of luck)
• Financial analyst Michael Pachter believes StarCraft II will sell 3 million copies in its first week.
• Another analyst, Colin Sebastian, is predicting the game will sell 4.5 million copies this quarter and 6.5 million in the publisher's fiscal year.
• Fellow PC RTS game make The Creative Assembly is praising Blizzard's commitment to PC gaming.
• However Jagex head man Mark Gerhard believes that Blizzard is "probably very arrogant - perhaps even over-self-assured"

StarCraft II finally launched last night and we know that lots of you are using your mouse and keyboard furiously to play Blizzard's sci-fi RTS sequel right now. But wouldn't you want to play the game with a keyboard specifically designed for the game and on a mouse pad with some StarCraft II imagery? Of course you would.

That's why Big Download wants to offer three StarCraft II editions of SteelSeries' Zboard PC gaming keyboards as a giveaway to our readers. These keyboards have special keys and software designed especially for use in StarCraft II. We will even throw in a SteelSeries OcK mouse pad with StarCraft II character Tychus Findlay staring up at you. You can check out an image of the mouse pad after the jump.

How do you get a chance to win the keyboard and mouse pad bundle? It's actually pretty easy:

• To enter, post a comment on this contest page.
• The comment must be left before 11:59 pm Eastern Time on Thursday, July 29
• You may enter only once.
• Three winners will be selected in a random drawing.
• The winners will be sent a SteelSeries Zboard StarCraft II edition (valued at approximately $70) and a SteelSeries StarCraft II OcK mouse pad (valued at approximately $15)
• Click Here for complete Official Rules. You must be a resident of the US or Canada (excluding Quebec) who is 18 years or older to enter this contest

Our thanks to SteelSeries for the donation of the prizes for this giveaway. Good luck. Don't forget that we are still giving away three copies of StarCraft II with the deadline of Wednesday at 11:59 pm Eastern time to enter. And stay tuned all this week as we will have even more StarCraft II related prizes to win.

Game retailer GameStop has said it wants to expand its digital game offerings and today the company did exactly that. Today GameStop announced that it had acquired the web-based game portal Kongregate. The site is home to over 30,000 web based games and 10 million users. Indie developers can gain revenue via micro-transactions and via ads. Financial terms of today's deal were not disclosed.

Kongregate's co-founder Jim Greer has posted up a funny FAQ on today's GameStop acquisition along with a video of Greer on the same topic (stay until the end of the video, by the way). Greer states that all employees of Kongregate will stay in their offices in California and that the site will continue to offer free games for its users. There are plans to give Kongregate users a way to link to GameStop's new PowerUp rewards program.

The classic Sierra Online-published Space Quest adventure games are no strangers to the DRM-free web site GoG.com. The site is already home to a bundle that collects the fourth, fifth and sixth installments of the humorous sci-fi game series. Now GoG.com has announced that the first three Space Quest games are available to purchase and download in a bundle.

The games, now owned by Activision, feature the space janitor Roger Wilco as he tries to fight for "truth, justice and really clean floors.' The first three games in the series were released in 1986, 1987, and 1989, respectively, and were very funny send-ups of sci-fi cliches as well as other events related to pop culture. You can download the Space Quest bundle from GoG.com now for $9.99.

Earlier this month we reported that 38 Studios was considering moving its main headquarters in Boston, Massachusetts to Rhode Island in order to secure loans from that state's government. Today Boston.com reports that the Rhode Island Economic Development Corp. has indeed voted 8 to 1 to give 38 Studios a whopping $75 million in loan guarantees to move to the state. 38 Studios claims it will bring 450 jobs directly to Rhode Island by the end of 2012. If the developer shuts down operations, the state will have to repay the loans.

The game studio, founded by former Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling, just announced its first game last week, the fantasy RPG Kingdoms of Amalur Reckoning, which is being developed by Maryland-based Big Huge Games. 38 Studios' main office is working on a fantasy MMO code named Copernicus.

Another Massachusetts-based game developer, Demiurge Studios, made the unusual move of emailing to the press an open letter written to Schilling. The letter, which is also available on Demiurge's web site, asks Schilling to reconsider moving 38 Studios out of the Boston area. Demiurge's CEO William Reed states, "As 38 Studios' in-development MMO grows, you will soon realize that although the capital you have secured will fund your endeavors, the most vital and necessary component to completing your project is the vast pool of talent and resources you are leaving behind." Reed adds that members of 38 Studios who don't want to move are "more than welcome to join the team at Demiurge Studios, the state's soon-to-be largest independent game studio."

The beta period for Stardock's upcoming turn-based fantasy strategy game Elemental: War of Magic is getting close to the end. The game's official web site has posted up a preview of the game's beta 4 build which will be released to beta testers later this week. Beta 4 will be the last phase of the game's beta test period before Elemental is released on August 24.

According to Stardock head man Brad Wardell, "The stability of Beta 4 (our current internal beta of it) is equal to the day 0 version of Galactic Civilizations II and its performance significantly better than the release version of Galactic Civilizations II." He adds, "As of today, the game is now sufficiently ahead of schedule that the Stardock team is no longer in "crunch mode"

As with any PC game product, StarCraft II has some issues that are known to the development team at Blizzard. The scif-ti RTS sequel has some bugs in it and the game's official message boards have a list of known issues that are presented on the game's official message boards. One of the issues is having Blizzard's auto-updater being shown by anti-virus programs as a trojan. Another issue is seeing black screens "being related to the use of a Quick Cam webcam." Some of these problems do have listed workarounds. There's also a current bug list available to read on the forums.

If you have yet to purchase StarCraft II on the fear that your PC might not run the game, Blizzard also has more detail on the game's PC system requirements beyond the system specs that Blizzard confirmed earlier this month, including more detail on what processors and video cards will and will not work with the game.

For the past few days, a number of players on the PC version of Modern Warfare 2 have been on a rampage on various message boards, complaining that Valve has banned them from playing online even though they didn't do anything. For a little while it looked like Valve wasn't going to do anything about it but tonight it seems Valve has found a fault in its VAC anti-cheat system.

Valve's head man Gabe Newell has issued an email to those who were affected including one who posted his email on Steam's forums. Newell states, "This was our mistake, and I apologize for any frustration or angst it may have caused you." He then gave a rather technical explanation on why the inncorrect bans were made and then added, "We have reversed the ban, restoring your access to the game. In addition, we have given you a free copy of Left 4 Dead 2 to give as a gift on Steam, plus a free copy for yourself if you didn't already own the game." So apparently everything is cool.