EA has released 18 new screenshots for The Sims 3.

You can see those screenshots here.

We've prepared another competition for Strategy Informer members! Codemasters were kind enough to provide some cool prizes to pack it with. The prizes that we have are: Xbox 360 Faceplate, Statue, Keychain and a T-Shirt. They're all themed with the upcoming multi-platform RPG game, Rise of the Argonauts.

A class action suit filed September 22nd with the northern California District Court is asking for a judgment in excess of $5 million from Electronic Arts. The suit was filed by one Melissa Thomas and "all others similarly situated." The complaint sites that the installation of SecureROM as part of the Spore installation was not authorized by the Plaintiff and that SecureROM can have undesired effects on the consumer. A copy of the complaint is found on Courthouse News.

Almost lost in the uproar over the DRM complaints surrounding Electronic Arts Spore, are complaints concerning the online accounts for Spore. Contrary to what is stated in the manual Spore only allows one online account to be created per install – so on a multiple use system you can only have one Spore screen name regardless of how many users share the system.

Strategy Informer has a Call of Duty 4 game server running with Before the Dawn mod installed on it. Those of you that have played this mod will know what it is about, and for those of you that haven't, well lucky you, you will get to experience it for the first time.

The release of Electronic Arts Spore with the much maligned SecureROM anti-piracy system drew mass criticism from users on the Internet. Many forum posters complained about the restrictive DRM requirements and the average customer review of the game on Amazon.com as of this writing is 1.5 stars out of 5. Many of the reviews complain about problems installing the game and reaching activation servers in order to play the game. Others complain about the limit to the number of allowed installs.

Ok it's time for a new competition! We've managed to get approval for 5 free games from GamersGate for this competition. Hence, the winner of this competition will get to pick any game from GamersGate of his/her choice. They got a lot of great up to date games over there so be sure to check them out.

To celebrate the launch of the game on PC DVD-ROM our friends at SEGA have given us 5 e-GeForce 9600 GT 512MB graphics cards to give away. These high-spec graphics cards from EVGA feature NVIDIA® SLI™ technology, next-generation superscalar GPU architecture and full Microsoft® DirectX® 10 shader model 4.0 support.

EA announced today that The Sims 3 will be released globally on February 20th, 2009 for PC.

This information was announced at the Leipzig Game Convention during an EA press conference this morning. EA also revealed a Collector's Edition that will be available in retail stores on the same date, and will include the full game along with Sims merchandise and an in-game Italian sports car as an exclusive item.

Atari and Red Mile Entertainment are bringing Heroes over Europe, a realistic tactical flight combat game, to the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC in 2009.

The sequel to the mighty World War II flight combat game Heroes of the Pacific, Heroes over Europe takes aspiring combat pilots into the bullet-ridden heart of major World War II European air battles in glorious dogfight-friendly high definition. Heroes over Europe follows the Allied campaign from the attacks on London to the destruction of Berlin, with players under orders to strap themselves into the authentically rendered cockpits of the campaign’s iconic aircraft. Their mission: to survive the most ferocious dogfights ever seen in a flight combat game.