Activision has paid out $42 million to the "Infinity Ward Employee Group," which sued Activision in 2010 seeking profits from Modern Warfare 2. A source speaking to Polygon said that the payment was not a settlement; rather, Activision's discovery phase (for its own lawsuit against former Infinity Ward leads Jason West and Vince Zampella) found no evidence that the Employee Group members were complicit in the breach-of-contract issues for which Activision is suing, and so Bobby Kotick and Activision agreed to pay them. That group sought $75 million to $125 million ...

Thanks to another week of minimal competition, Sniper Elite V2 maintains its vantage point atop the UK charts for a second week. The game may have seen sales drop 38 percent, but none of the new entries made any type of shakeup on the charts, with the regular motley crew holding the top ten. The EA triplets of FIFA 12, FIFA Street and Mass Effect 3 find themselves in second, third and fifth place, respectively. Nudging in there for some cuddle time in fourth is Prototype 2. Sony's Starhawk is the only new title to crack the top 40, flying in at spot 17 for its debut. ...

The results for April are in, and things are looking a little rough out there in consumer video-game electronics land. As a whole, the gaming industry (which for our purposes includes all hardware, software and accessories sales between April 1 and April 28, 2012) brought in $630.4 million, a 32 percent decrease over the same period last year, where its various machinations resulted in collective sales of $930.9 million. Breaking the industry down into its three major components, hardware sales accounted for $189.7 million (down 32 percent year over year) ...

Sony will stream its E3 2012 press conference through the internets in a little under a month, having already established the obligatory site with a large countdown clock. Be sure to have a Big Gulp and popcorn ready on Monday, June 4, for all the highs and spectacularly awkward lows. Nintendo has yet to announce its streaming plans for the show, but Microsoft will have its press conference broadcast on the Spike TV network in the States and distributed through Xbox Live streaming. So, watch along at home, and join us on here ...

Sniper Elite V2 is naturally going to want a position at the top of Chart-Track's UK charts... it's the best vantage point. Thankfully, there wasn't very much competition around, as evidenced by what is probably the shortest overview of last week's sales activity by the stat tracking company in recent memory. The prior week's top performer, Prototype 2, fell one spot into second. It was followed by the EA triplets that never seem to be apart: FIFA 12, FIFA Street and Mass Effect 3. Beyond that, no new games to report making moves, no major shuffling of the status quo ...

Prototype 2 launched on Tuesday in the UK (instead of a Friday, per usual) last week and leapt to the top of the charts. Despite the strong premiere, Chart-Track notes the sequel couldn't match the first week sales success of the original game. Chart-Track doesn't share raw sales numbers, but it did point out that the game had stronger sales than previous chart-toppers Kinect Star Wars and The Witcher 2. Speaking of Witcher 2, which held the crown last week, it slipped five spots into sixth place. EA continues to have a winning cluster with FIFA Street, FIFA 12 and Mass Effect 3 ...

FIFA Street returned to the top of the charts when sales were tallied in the UK last week, scoring its fourth first place finish. Chart-Track notes the title has now matched the rank history of the original FIFA Street, which also owned the hard charting streets for four weeks back in 2005. Overall, though, it was actually a pretty quiet week in the battle for rankings, with the entirety of the top ten playing musical charts. Last week's chart-topper, Kinect Star Wars, was not the game more people were looking for, and slipped down to fourth. The only new release last week to break the top 40 was Pandora's Tower from Nintendo ...

It's time once again for the PlayStation Network to be poked, prodded and generally fiddled around with by Sony's countless technicians and maintenance cyborgs. As per usual, 13 hours chock full of network rejiggering are scheduled to begin today at 9 a.m. EST, during which time the PSN Store, PlayStation Home, Account Management services and online play will be unavailable. PlayStation websites hosted on PSN servers, like the Official PlayStation Blog, will also be offline during maintenance. The official PlayStation Twitter account, however, ...

Game has effectively checked itself before it wrecked itself, first selling its UK operations and now selling its stores in Spain and Portugal, MCV reports. OpCaptia, the same investment company behind the UK deal, established Cherrilux Investments for the Iberian transaction and bought all 290 stores across Spain and Portugal. Cherrilux is a "sister company" to Baker Acquisitions, which bought the UK branch, and both businesses will most likely run independently but share revenue, MCV says ...