Bunch of Nerds now has a family! Well, we always have had family, but, now our blog officially does. Playthrough.net used to be one of the crucial community sites for those involved in the games industry quality assurance field before a tragic, tragic database crash mid-Summer 2006. Shortly after Bunch of Nerds’ quite successful launch (less than 3 months ago WOO!), the decision was made to break off our nerdy posting about the games industry gossip that rolled across our tables daily and turn Playthrough into our outlet for all things gamey. So it’s here, kind of. We are still cleaning up some small bugs here and there, but, you get the gist. So all those interested in lots of gamer-centric jibba jabba from a couple of nerds, feel free to give a visit to Playthrough and give them a virtual wedgie for us.

Read more: Playthrough – Games industry gossip, news, yada yada and more

As a follow up to our previous post regarding Bizarre Creations asking that bedroom-developer Mark Incitti cease development and distribution of his freeware Geometry Wars clone, Grid Wars, Bizarre has released a very thorough statement clarifying their position.

As it’s quite long, check the whole statement after the jump..

Read more of ”Bizarre Creations clarifies position on Geometry Wars clones“

I know, I know, this has been anywhere and everywhere already, but still. From a recent job posting by Blizzard, it appears they are looking for new talent who are experienced with next generation console experience, which leads one to believe that Blizzard has some sort of next-gen project in the works, or currently in production. While I have a sneaking suspicion this is for StarCraft Ghost, which was been notoriously delayed and rumored to have been bumped up to a next-gen project, we can all sit and hope that a Warcraft or Diablo franchise makes it’s way to a next gen console (Wii or Xbox360 if we had our way).

[Blizzard job posting for senior producer] (Via GameDaily.biz)

NCsoft has confirmed previous rumours that they’ve laid off 70 of their over 300 employees at NCsoft-Austin (in Texas). Rumored to get hit the hardest were their QA and GM departments (of course!). Rumours originally broke on a large, private industry-insider’s forum and were quickly picked up by games blog f13.net. Rumored to be at the root of the problems is City of Heroes/Villains dwindling subscriber-base (now supposedly dropping under 100,000 total), the slow-start that new title, Auto Assault, is off to, and the huge flaming money pit that Tabula Rasa has turned into. There’s no news on how, if at all, this will effect ArenaNet and Guildwars development. It’s time to launch that universal subscription fee NCsoft, you’d get me back if only I could play Lineage II, CoH, and Auto Assault all at one low price. Condolences all around to those who are now without work.

[NCsoft fires 70 | (Via TCE)]

EA announced yesterday that they intend to purchase “Dark Age of Camelot” and “Warhammer Online” developer Mythic Entertainment. Mythic will be expected to transition into a fully-owned studio of EA, focusing on developing EA’s future MMORPG titles. Mythic is currently working on “Warhammer Online”, which is expected to be released Q4 2007 and currently employs around 175 developers.

[EA acquires Mythic Entertainment]