Today is the day you get Battlefield 3! Why, you ask? Because today is the day you can pick it up at absolutely zero cost that is to say, free as the second game in Origin's "On the House" program.

Electronic Arts unveiled "On the House" in March with a Dead Space giveaway and implied that there might be an element of randomness to the thing, saying that OTH freebies "can appear and disappear at any time." Today's announcement of Battlefield 3 as the next OTH giveaway, on the other hand, suggests it something more regular, coming as it does almost exactly one month after Dead Space, but does it matter? I say, no. I say that free is free, and I'll take it wherever and whenever I can.

And no worries if you already have Battlefield 3, because there's a Plan B: Plants vs. Zombies, which has also been marked down to zero. That is perhaps somewhat less compelling as deals go since it's only five bucks at regular price and just about everyone on the planet already owns it anyway, but again, free is free and to be perfectly honest, if you haven't played either of them and for some odd reason can only get one, I'd actually recommend Plants vs. Zombies. It really is a brilliant game.

But the smart thing to do is to grab them both, which you may do here for BF3 and here for PvZ, until June 3. For all the details, point yourself at Origin.

"Hell, it's about time," I imagine a spacesuited sunflower grunting, a cigar dangling between its happy-mouthed lips. Is that the image Plants vs Zombies 2 intended to invoke with its new tagline? Will zergling-zombies make a surprise appearance in the sequel? It's hard to say with this new teaser trailer, but if there's one thing it can teach us, it's that despite the far-ranging diversity of PvZ's audience, all of these hilarious stereotypes are united in their desire for more garden-themed tower defensing—and that they'll finally have a reason to stop complaining come July.

Social misfits with webcams, hipster dudes in a creative start-up, angry granddads, PC Gamer writers typing from their living room couch—oh yeah, everyone wants a piece of that pea-hurling action. This asparagus enthusiast is hoping that the "Aspearagus" makes it into PvZ2—what sort of veggies are you hoping to see?

On the week of SimCity's ill-fated launch, during which a lot more people wanted to play SimCity than SimCity's servers could handle, Maxis SVP Lucy Bradshaw promised us each a free EA game for our troubles. Today, EA announced that SimCity sold over 1.1 million units in its first two weeks (well, there's your problem), and Maxis announced the list of apology games for SimCity owners to choose from:


Battlefield 3 (Standard Edition)
Bejeweled 3
Dead Space 3 (Standard Edition)
Mass Effect 3 (Standard Edition)
Medal of Honor Warfighter (Standard Edition)
Need For Speed Most Wanted (Standard Edition)
Plants vs. Zombies
SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition


The free game will be acquired through a "redemption portal" which will be rolled out in the Origin client later this week. To take part in the offer, you must register your copy of SimCity on Origin by March 25, 2013 at 11:59 p.m. PDT and redeem the free game by March 30, 2013 at 11:59 p.m. PDT. E-mails with instructions will start going out to owners today—I just received an update and on-message apology which opens:

"Our SimCity Mayors are incredibly important to the team at Maxis. We know we messed up and want to sincerely thank you for staying with us. The good news is we have solved most of the major issues and players are really enjoying the game. We're getting great feedback from our fans and know that many of you are having fun and are exploring this whole new expression of SimCity."

Despite the controversy surrounding and criticism of SimCity's always-online requirement, mixed messages about the decision, and much-discussed simulation flaws, EA says the 1.1 million unit figure makes SimCity the franchise's biggest launch of all time.

Update: Valve's Doug Lombardi told Joystiq: "As a point of clarification, this is probably better categorized as Valve hiring two new employees instead of an acquisition of a company or opening of a Valve SF office."

Original: Valve Time are reporting that the two-man operation Star Filled Studios have been bought by Valve, and will be heading up a new office based in San Francisco.

According to the LinkedIn profile of Star Filled's Tod Semple, a former programmer for PopCap, "my recent startup was acquired by Valve and we are opening a new office on the San Francisco peninsula."

Star Filled Studios is comprised of Tod, who has previously worked at Blizzard and LucasArts, and Jeff Gates, who did work on Maxis' Spore and Blizzard's Diablo 3. Both then worked together at PopCap.

Valve's plans for the company are still a mystery. While Star Filled Studios never announced what they were working on, their website states, "our games are made to be playable by everyone and available on iPhone, Steam and many different platforms."

The last company acquired by Valve was Turtle Rock Studios, who made Left 4 Dead before being rolled into Valve's Bellevue HQ. Turtle Rock have since reopened, now independent of Valve.

Thanks CVG.

Today's "say it ain't so" news involves PopCap releasing about 50 employees at its Seattle offices and investigating the shaky future of its Dublin, Ireland branch. Now, PopCap co-founder John Vechey took to the keyboard with an official blog post explaining the decision with unusual clarity.

"In the past year, we’ve seen a dramatic change in the way people play and pay for games," Vechey wrote. "Free-to-play, social and mobile games have exploded in popularity. That happened fast. Surprisingly so. The change in consumer tastes requires us to reorganize our business and invest in new types of games on new platforms. It’s a completely different world from when we started."

"There’s also an economic component to the reorganization. To stay in business, we need to manage costs, improve efficiency, and maintain a profit. We’ve been able to invest in creative new games like Peggle and Plants vs. Zombies because we had a high profit business. That business is challenged, and if we don’t adapt, we won’t be able to invest in new IP. That sounds harsh -- but if we don’t stay in business, no more plants, zombies, jewels, frogs, or worms."

Vechey later tweeted a followup thought to the employee departures, saying, "PopCap's leadership, especially and including myself, are the only ones culpable for this sad news."

We're saddened by the layoffs at PopCap. It's refreshing, however, to see a developer breaking bad news with such candor, rather than burying it in an obfuscating haze of corporate jargon.

Did you enjoy Plants vs. Zombies? We did, very much. It was a dark drama about sunflowers plopping out light beads in the shadow of hordes of hungry undead, some of them wearing speedos. Expect more strangeness spring next year when the zombies return with new strategies designed to undo your home grown garden defences. There are no real details yet, but unlike most of EA's other games at the moment, it doesn't seem to be made in the Frostbite engine, as far as we know. Hooray! The screenshot above is from Plants vs. Zombies 1.

“Spring is crullest curlie ungood time, and plantz grow dull roots,” a zombie told PopCap's press department. “So, we are meating you for brainz at yore house. No worry to skedule schedlue plan… we're freee anytime. We'll find you.” What a polite young zombie.