Starting January 6th, Belarus, a former Soviet state that became independent in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union, will restrict what its citizens can do on the Internet, thanks to new legislation. The new law requires that anyone doing business in the country must utilize fully local Internet domains when carrying out their activities online. Basically, this law criminalizes the use of web sites such as Amazon or Google if they don't have a web site within the country.

BioWare has explained some of the recent Star Wars: The Old Republic bans and vowed to make adjustments to areas where players have been found to be exploiting. Last week some players were banned from playing because they were looting containers in planet Ilum at too low a level - a move that apparently made many in the SWTOR community upset. Community manager Stephen Reid took to the SWTOR website to explain exactly what had happened and why some players were banned.

Nathan Fouts of Mommy's Best Games - the company behind Serious Sam: Double D - has written an open letter to members of the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) asking them to urge the trade group to drop its support of SOPA. He also urged gamers, supposedly represented by the ESA and its Video Game Voters Network, to urge the group to drop its support of the bill as well.

Magazine publisher Computec Media announced details on the second round of its international game developer contest, Make the Game 2012. Indie developers interested in registering for the international browser and social games competition have until April 16 to do so. This year Computec Media plans to invest 1 million Euros in the contest to find the best new browser and social network games. Entries will be judged by a five-member jury of "experts," who will ultimately award prizes to up to three promising games.

According to new data released by app analytics firm Flurry, 1.2 billion applications were downloaded for Android and iOS devices between December 25 and December 31. Earlier in the week the group predicted that in that same period it expected new Android and iOS device activations to be right around 6.8 million. Now they are saying that the number is probably closer to 20 million. Read more

Speed Demos Archive is looking for some help to raise money for the Prevent Cancer Foundation, starting on January 4. As you can probably glean from the title of the group, they are dedicated to running through games in the shortest amount of time possible, and enjoy posting their exploits on places like YouTube for notoriety’s sake.

Supergiant Games' popular PC and Xbox Live Arcade action-RPG Bastion has sold more than 500,000 copies to date, according to a recent company blog post. Bastion launched for XBLA in July and on Steam in August, and received praise from both critics and players for its unique style and it's wonderful on-the-fly narrative system. The company noted in its blog post that recent price cuts and sales promotions on both platforms helped them attain the numbers they currently enjoy.